Of Pride and Prejudice
by InMemoriam
Summary: None of them could remember when their rivalry had truly started.
1. Prologue

Title: Of Pride and Prejudice  
Rating: R (just in case)  
Pairing: Sawyer/Ana-Lucia WIP  
Summary: None of them could really remember when their rivalry had truly started.  
Warnings: Unsure yet, but I will warn you at the beginning of the chapter if there is anything warning-worthy. It's bound to get pretty dark at points so be forewarned.  
Disclaimer: I own squat. If I owned Lost, Ana would be alive and she and Sawyer would be happily married with three small children.

Prologue

_None of them could really remember when their rivalry had truly started. Perhaps it had been the week that he had moved down the street from her or perhaps it had been when he'd asked her to the high school formal. In the end, it never mattered. Not after what happened that summer of 2004. The trials that each of them faced that summer would never prepare them for the horror of what happened before they went back to school. _

They were a tight-knit group of friends, their own little clique, despite their number. Each of them was so different from the other that it was perplexing to anyone outside of their circle. One was as different to all the others as night and day, winter and summer, They ranged in ages from fourteen to sixteen, but had all managed to end up at Widmore High School for one reason or another.

Jack Shepard, Kate Austen and Boone Carlisle had grown up together, friends since before they were born, friends until long after. Kate was the youngest of the trio, having been born two years after Jack, one after Boone. Jack and Boone treated Kate like their youngest sibling. They were there when she learned to walk and when she learned to talk. They helped her learn to ride a bike and showed her the joys of Saturday morning cartoons. They taught her the beauty of the perfect mudpie and how to make her snowballs go exactly where she wanted them to. At one point in their lives, they even took baths together. (Jack's mother likes to rub this in their faces as often as possible, always threatening to pull out the pictures she has hidden somewhere when their other friends come over to the house. Jack, Kate and Boone all strongly object to this sort of thing.)

When Jack and Boone were six (Boone having just turned) and Kate four, Claire Littleton moved to their little town. The shy, little blond girl with the funny speech was like a magnet to the three, though each for a different reason. Boone had a crush, pure and simple. Kate loved the girl's friendliness and how she was always smiling. Jack was attracted to her soothing nature, and she almost glowed with peace and innocence to him. But, soon, the four of them had become co-conspirators to the others and were almost never seen without the other three.

Kate's mom died of cancer when she was eight and the little girl took it hard. On the eve of the funeral, Kate managed to somehow lock herself in the bathroom of the funeral home and began to sob hysterically when she couldn't get out. In truth, the door's locking mechanism had jammed, making the knob unusable. When they finally removed the door, everyone found Kate huddling in the corner, knees pulled to her chest. She rocked back and forth, staring at the yellowed paisley in front of her and nothing any of them said would console her. It was long after the last guest left before Jack, Boone and Claire could get her to even move other than rocking back and forth. For years after that, Kate would wake up screaming or in tears, mumbling about how the walls were always closing in on her. She turned out to be very claustrophobic and refused to set foot in a funeral home after her breakdown.

When Boone was ten his mother, Sabrina Carlisle (who barely paid attention to him anyway because she worked so much), married a man named Adam Rutherford. He brought his daughter, Shannon, to live with them. Four foot three inches of pure, unadulterated, blond girliness was almost enough to drive Boone insane. Every other night, Shannon would push open his door, claiming to have had another nightmare (what about, she never told him), and tuck herself under his bedcovers, attaching herself to his mid-section like a leech to a wound. Somehow, on those mornings, Shannon would end up snugly cocooned in all his covers, leaving Boone to die from air conditioning induced hypothermia. But despite how Shannon jabbed at each of them nastily in turn, she was a vital part of the group and they never complained, knowing it was all in good fun. At the end of the day, they were friends. Each of them knew that in their hearts and that was all that mattered to any of them.

Shannon was ten when two siblings-a brother and a sister-moved to their town from California. The girl, who was a whole year older than Shannon, took immediately to the cheeky blond and, soon, the two were thicker than thieves. Ana Lucia Cortez and Shannon Rutherford could never be found alone. You get one, you get the other and God forbid you broke one of their hearts. Nothing would save you then-between Ana and Shannon's biting wits, Jack's bulldog-like protection, Boone's determination, Kate's penchant for fistfights and Claire's deceiving cunning, if you got on one bad side, all of them would avenge their downed friend before they buoyed them back to the top where they belonged.

Ana's brother...well, half-brother, Sayid Jarrah (they were related through their mother, Teresa), shied away from Shannon and Ana, choosing instead to stick with Jack and Boone. The three would spend hours locked away in Jack's or Boone's room, scheming intricate heists and pranks they swore to go through with one day. Occasionally, Kate and Claire would join them but it didn't happen often enough that anyone would comment on it.

In the second grade (for Kate), an oriental girl showed up for class one day and was introduced to the class as Sun Paik. Sun was sat in front of Kate, who proceeded to poke the girl in front of her until she burst into confused tears. After having to sit in the corner for the rest of the class, Kate tracked Sun down to the second floor stairwell and apologized, explaining that she had just wanted to talk to her and not make her cry. Sun smiled sadly, wiping the rapidly ceasing tears from her face and nodded when Kate asked if she knew English. She told Kate that she and her mother had moved here from Korea to get away from Sun's less than honest father. At lunch, Kate introduced Sun to Jack, Boone, Shannon, Ana, Sayid and Claire, who all welcomed her with open arms.

Jin Kwon arrived when Sayid (who was two years older than Shannon) was thirteen. The struck up an odd sort of friendship based more around mutual respect than communication (because Jin could only speak mildly broken English and Sun had to translate often). But Jin became part of the group and he and Sun attached themselves to each other's hips.

Hugo Reyes was drawn in right at the beginning of ninth grade, when Ana defended him from being taunted about his size. The bully ended up with a broken nose and kept away from Hugo from the rest of the year. Ana gave Hugo the nickname Hurley, for...well, for various reasons and the nickname stuck. Hugo's pretty, younger sister, Cindy, was inducted as well.

Micheal and Eko Dawson moved from one town over at the end of that year and didn't know anyone, so Ana, Kate and Cindy, automatically pulled them under their wing.

It was in eleventh grade (for Jack) that **he** came to their school. He and his two siblings, a boy and a girl. Hurley immediately took a liking to Elizabeth Ford as soon as he saw her walking down the hall, with her feathery blond hair and her cheerful smile and the two were instant friends. Charlie Ford managed to attach himself to Claire's side one day and he never really left.

James Ford, however, was a completely different matter...


	2. School Daze, Part 1

Title: Of Pride and Prejudice  
Rating: R (just in case)  
Pairing: Sawyer/Ana-Lucia WIP  
Summary: None of them could really remember when their rivalry had truly started.  
Warnings: None  
Disclaimer: I own squat. If I owned Lost, Ana would be alive and she and Sawyer would be living happily married with three small children.  
A/N: The italics are the narrator (gasp The Narrator? Yes there _is_ a narrator and you'll see why.) Also, they're all in different grades. Shannon, Kate, and Cindy are in 9th; Ana, Boone, Charlie, Claire, Hurley, Libby, Sun, and Jin are in 10th; Jack, Sawyer, Sayid, Michael and Eko are in 11th. Just to clear that up, even for me. I must have sat there for about 20 mins trying to figure out who's in what grade this year. Oh, and this chapter might seem kinda short, I don't know.

School Daze, Part 1

_The school year began like any other. The buses drove up and loosed the flood of grumbling students to the dam that was the high school. The chaos that ensued in the halls had not been seen since the beginning of the previous year and it was a stressful event for teachers and students alike. Between the nervously buzzing freshmen, the sleep deprived, middle aged teachers and the tininess of the hall itself, bumping into someone carrying something scalding was an all too common occurrence. _

Kate Austen leaned against the faded and chipped blue lockers, people watching as her best friend, Boone, tried to arrange his locker in a semblance of neatness.

"You are so anal, you know that?" Kate asked, her long, wavy, brown hair falling around her face like a curtain as she looked down at her friend in slight disbelief.

"I lik-" Boone was cut off as he tried to catch the tower of books (that he was trying to arrange so neatly in his locker) as it tipped over. Pushing the books back into a neat pile, he gave them a satisfied look before slamming the door closed and standing to face Kate, whose eyebrows were raised in amusement. "I like everything to be in easy reach." Boone said, adjusting his backpack upon his shoulders and shifting uncomfortably at Kate's smirk.

"You're _anal_, Boone." Kate said, rolling her eyes and pushing off of the lockers, walking towards her home room. "And how did you get your books before everybody else anyway? It's only the first day."

"I called ahead." he snapped, trying to keep up with Kate through the throng of fellow classmates that she was sliding through like water. "And I am _not_ anal!" he added huffily.

"Katie! Boone!"

A voice cut through the noise of the crowd and they both looked towards it. Claire stood at the end of the hall, waving wildly over the heads as best she could while trying to keep her bright blue messenger bag from slipping to the floor. Kate waved back and the pair hurried toward her, getting there just as Jack, Ana and Shannon appeared.

"Have you guys heard about the new kids?" Shannon asked, looking like she had just discovered a juicy secret no one knew but her. Which, for all intents, was very nearly true. Only Ana knew about the "new kids" and that was probably only what Shannon had told her.

"The freshmen?" Kate asked, wrinkling her nose in confusion as to why Shannon would be so excited over freshmen as she was one. Despite taking eleventh grade classes, along with Ana, Claire, Boone and herself, also a freshmen.

"_No_, not the freshmen, Katie!" Shannon squealed, her blue eyes lighting up, "The three new students from Canada!"

"Canada?" Jack asked, "What are they doing down here then?"

"Apparently, the eldest boy-they're brothers and sister-got into some sort of trouble up there and they had to just drop _everything_ and leave." Shannon told them. At this bit of info, they all looked at each other silently until Ana broke in.

"I heard them talking in the Principal's office this morning." she revealed, surprising everyone.

"Ana, how did you end up in the principal's office? It's only the first bloody day!" Claire asked incredulously.

"My classes got mixed up and I had to get them fixed, Blondie." Ana said, making a funny face at Claire who just laughed softly. "The girl is seriously strange, though. She sat and 'psychoanalyzed' at me until I wanted to shoot _myself_ just to get away from her." Ana continued, shuddering in psychoanalytically laced, horror-induced memories. "She was like a...a..."

"A shrink?" Claire asked, furrowing her brow and looking up at Kate, who just shrugged.

"Yeah. I had to wait fifteen damn minutes before I could see the principal about my classes because the secretary couldn't figure the damn thing out." Ana said, searching through her bag for something she seemed to have suddenly needed. "Blabbity blab, right in my ear. 'Oh, you seem tense.' and 'Sarcasm is a defense mechanism, you know.' Here's one: 'I don't care.' " Ana finished nastily.

"You don't even know her, Ana. C'mon." Jack said, cocking an eyebrow. Ana snorted.

"Oh, so _you_ were the one who had her ear talked off for the last fifteen minutes with no way out?" Ana snapped, looking at him. "Didn't know you were a transvestite, Jack."

"Ana, knock it off!" Boone hissed, looking around to see if anyone had caught Ana's sentence.

"Why?" Ana asked sweetly, voice dripping with syrupy sweetness. The look on her face said otherwise.

"C'mon, guys." Kate said, trying to intervene before it went too far. "It's the first day. We'll meet the new kids during the day, I'm sure. Everyone can make their own judgements then."

_Lately, Jack and Ana had been clashing more than usual and it was grating on everyone's nerves. There was this whole little "unrequited-love-triangle" thing that she, Jack and Ana had going on. She liked Jack except Jack was crushing on Ana who wanted nothing to do with him like that. Sure, Ana liked Jack as a friend but she just wasn't interested in him like that. Ana had once told Kate point blank that Kate could have him if she wanted him that badly. She also threatened that if Kate didn't get him off her back soon, Jack would become a eunuch. Kate had yet to see that happen._

Ana silently fumed at both Kate and Jack before grabbing Shannon's wrist and stomping off. The rest of the group watched them go in silence, their morning ruined before it had begun.

"Jack, just get bloody over her already!" Claire snapped angrily, storming off after the duo.

Jack, Kate and Boone remained there awkwardly-Jack turning bright red as he stared at the floor, Kate rolling her lips in and out of her mouth and Boone looking at anything but his two best friends. Kate opened her mouth to say something, but got cut off by the warning bell, alerting them that they needed to get to home room.

"I'll, uh, I'll see you guys in Bio." Kate said, quickly melting into the crowd and leaving them behind before either boy could protest.

Kate sighed in relief as she walked through the door of the science lab, grateful that it was her last class that day. It was ridiculous-she already had homework in Algebra 2, English Lit and P.E.

Walking towards the back where Jack, Boone, Shannon, Ana and Claire all sat in the same row. Sitting in the empty chair between Boone and Jack, she began to moan about homework.

"I mean, c'mon! How d'you get homework in Physical Education?" Kate moaned in disbelief. "It's a _contact_ class."

"I'm more interested in the new science teacher." Boone said, nodding toward the front of the classroom. At the teacher's desk sat an older man dressed in plaid whom Kate had failed to notice when she'd entered the room.

"Who?" Kate asked, looking at Boone, then Jack, who both shrugged. Kate leaned over past Boone to tap Ana on the shoulder. Ana turned and raised her eyebrows in questioning annoyance and Kate asked about the new teacher. But, surprisingly, neither of the other three girls knew about him either.

The bell rang, signaling the beginning of class and the students began to slowly quiet down. After five or ten minutes of the teacher reading something on his desk, he looked up and smiled at the class. His smile made chills corkscrew up and down Kate's spine and she shared a worried look with Boone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my name is John Locke." the man said, coming out from behind his desk. A ripple of surprise moved through the room as Professor Locke wheeled himself around his desk in a navy blue wheelchair and faced the class, folding his hands patiently across his thighs. "And I'm your new science teacher."


	3. School Daze, Part 2

Title: Of Pride and Prejudice  
Rating: R (just in case)  
Pairing: Sawyer/Ana-Lucia WIP  
Summary: None of them could really remember when their rivalry had truly started.  
Warnings: None  
Disclaimer: I own squat. If I owned _Lost_, Ana would be alive and she and Sawyer would be living happily married with three small children. Also, I don't own anything from Richard Adams' _Watership Down_, which will play a prominent role in the story thanks to Scouse.

School Daze, Part 2

_"Ladies and gentlemen, my name is John Locke." the man said, coming out from behind his desk. A ripple of surprise moved through the room as Professor Locke wheeled himself around his desk in a navy blue wheelchair and faced the class, folding his hands patiently across his thighs. "And I'm your new science teacher."_

Everyone just stared at the man before them. They couldn't find any words to say anything and they all jumped when the man-Professor Locke, clapped his hands together jovially.

"Let's get down to business then, shall we?" he asked the group, wheeling himself back behind his desk and opening a leather bound book on his desk. "I'm going to take attendance right now and that is the only time I'm going to take it for the whole year. Well, until the last day of class." Mr. Locke explained and everyone began to buzz. "I just want to put faces with names so I beg you all-humor me when I ask you this. I'm going to go around and say your name. When I do, I would like you to stand, say one thing you like about yourself, one thing you dislike about yourself and one thing you like about one other person in this room."

And so he began.

With Kate.

"Austen, Kathryn." he said, looking up from his book expectantly.

Kate stood hesitantly beside her chair, looking nervously around the room. She'd never been one for public speaking and, now, she knew why.

"Um...yeah, so I'm Kate...uh, what was I supposed to tell?" Kate asked Mr. Locke, voice trembling slightly. He smiled, giving her chills again, and repeated the list. "Okay, so, one thing I like about myself is my ability to defend myself. Something I dislike is..."

And they went on like that, each student saying something as quickly as possible before taking their seats once more. Everything ran smoothly until they got to Ana.

"Cortez, AnaLucia."

Ana stood quickly, cocking her hip out and crossing her arms as she began her diatribe.

"I'm Ana. I like my-"

That was when the door burst open, bouncing off the wall behind it, and cut Ana off. A tall boy with shaggy, dirty blond hair entered the room. A scowl seemed permanently glued to his face and a black cloud seemed to hover over his head. His bright blue eyes caught Ana's for a second before they proceeded over the rest of the class in something that wasn't _quite_ disgust-but just barely. He stalked toward the desk, and Mr. Locke, tossing a paper down upon the desk and murmuring something to the older man before stalking to one of the few remaining seats in the room. He sat two rows up, three chairs over from where Ana still stood, glaring angrily, as Mr. Locke read the paper.

"Ana, dear, you can sit. We'll continue tomorrow." Locke said, putting the paper in his lap and wheeling himself around the desk again. "Ladies and gentlemen, this dispassionate fellow is Mr. James Ford. He's just moved back to the country from Canada and I would like to make sure that you all treat him as you would want to be treated. You can speak amongst yourselves until it's time to go home." Locke finished, waving a hand in a dismissive gesture before returning to his desk and opening a book, settling down to read for the remainder of the class.

"He's an ass."

"Ana, he's not an ass." Boone said matter-of-factly as they continued their homeward walk down the road. Ana narrowed her eyes at Boone and he warily watched the suddenly very sharp stick in her hand.

"Boone, d'you remember what happened the last time you disagreed with Ana?" Shannon asked, her nose wrinkled a mixture of fear, horror and amusement. It looked like she'd caught a whiff of something terrible.

"Shannon, all I'm saying is that the new science teacher isn't an ass!" Boone snapped, stumbling slightly on a pavement square's edge.

"I wasn't talking about Locke, you moron." Ana said angrily, tossing the stick she'd been twirling from hand to hand into a passing yard. "I was talking about 'Mr. James Ford'." she finished, curling her lip as she made quotation signs with her fingers.

"I think he's hot." Shannon said, shrugging nonchalantly.

"You think anything with two legs and a steady breathing schedule is hot." Boone sneered, happy with himself until Ana smacked the back of his head. Hard. "Ouch!" he exclaimed, rubbing his head and glaring at her in resentment.

"You insult my best friend, you get hit in the head. Simple as that, Carlisle." Ana said, not trying to suppress the amusement she felt in the least.

"You're just upset cause he interrupted one of your little 'Me versus the World' tirades." Boone said, ducking as Ana thrashed out again. "Which I, for one, am glad fo-_Ow!_"

Shannon had smacked Boone on the head this time and she grinned at Ana before smiling innocently at Boone, who was rubbing the back of his head again.

"How did this turn from a simple argument to 'Raw is War'? And why am I always the one being smacked around?" Boone muttered, walking between the two girls up the driveway to his and Shannon's house. Ana said goodbye and turned to leave when Shannon called after her.

"Oh...Ana!" she yelled, reaching in to get the mail from the post box and shuffling through it as she spoke. "Hurley wants us to meet Libby tomorrow at lunch."

"Please tell me that's his brother." Ana groaned and Shannon smirked.

"Sorry." she said simply, turning and walking up the driveway. Ana groaned again as she stood and watched Shannon's form grow smaller until she disappeared into the house.

Ana slammed the screen door open as she entered the house.

"Ana Yo le dije no azotar esa puerta, señorita!" her mother yelled from the kitchen.

"Sí, sí." Ana muttered as she walked up the stairs to her room. "Lo siento, mama!"

"Soy gonna es después que su extremo si usted rompe esa puerta otra vez!" she heard her mother yell up the stairs. "That's the third door we've had to get in the past six months, Ana! And where's your brother?"

"I said I was sorry already! Ay! Sayid went home with Jack after school." Ana muttered, crawling onto her bed and settling herself into the deep purple of her comforter.

"I swear if that boy is getting into trouble again, I'm going to beat his sorry behind." she heard her mother mutter as she walked back into the kitchen, cursing in Spanish.

Letting her head sink into the pillow as best she could, she laid there, staring at the ceiling for a while. But, sooner rather than later, boredom got the better of her and she reached under her pillow, extracting a worn copy of Richard Adams' _Watership Down_. Thumbing through the book, Ana opened to page 281 and began to read the familiar words.

_" ' Turn back, El-ahrairah,' said one at last. 'You have no business here, in the pit. You are alive; and have suffered much already.' "_

The next morning, Ana stood at the end of the Rutherford/Carlisle driveway and waited for Shannon and Boone. Twenty minutes after she'd arrived, Shannon and Boone walked down the drive as Shannon chatted Boone's ear off.

"You could've come in, Ana." Shannon said when they reached her. "Had some breakfast."

"Thanks, but I'd rather _not_ have your step-mom stare at me like a piece of crap on the sole of her shoe again." Ana snapped, glaring at Boone, who tried to protest that it wasn't his fault. Ana had already begun sulking in anticipation of having Libby Ford psychoanalyze her to death.

Again.

"C'mon, let's go." Shannon said, placing herself firmly between the two and death-marching them down the road.

Translations  
-Yo le dije no azotar esa puerta, señorita! - I told you not to slam that door, young lady!  
-Sí, sí. Lo siento, mama! - Yeah, yeah. Sorry, mom!  
-Soy gonna es después que su extremo si usted rompe esa puerta otra vez! - I'm gonna be after your butt if you break that door again!


	4. A Night Out

Title: Of Pride and Prejudice  
Rating: R (just in case)  
Pairing: Sawyer/Ana-Lucia WIP  
Summary: None of them could really remember when their rivalry had truly started.  
Warnings: None  
Disclaimer: I own squat. If I owned _Lost_, Ana would be alive and she and Sawyer would be living happily married with three small children. Also, I don't own anything from Richard Adams' _Watership Down_, which will play a prominent role in the story thanks to Scouse.  
**A/N: A list of things to look for (this won't make future chapters harder to understand at all, it's just for fun ):  
-two fairly vague references to the numbers (it'll require a little effort, in regards to calculation)  
-a mention of a LVS3 episode  
-a very overt reference to one of the numbers (which was a complete and utter incident that I just realized I took part in)**

**LVS3 stands for 'Lost Virtual Season 3', a virtual season in which AnaLucia and Libby live over at Michelle Rodriguez Underground Forum. Go here to start reading that. Sign up or just look around-all the people over there seriously rock.**

Interlude One: A Night Out  
15 December 2009 

_She stopped what she was doing for a moment, stretching like a cat as the phone continued to ring. The phone stopped and, moments later, a knock echoed through the room. She dropped her arms to her lap and sighed. All these interruptions and she would never get done. _

"Sweetheart?" her husband asked, voice muffled by the door. He knocked again before popping the lock and poking his head into the library where she liked to work. "Honey, it's Claire. She wants to know if we want to go see a movie later with her and Charlie."

"It's not gonna be a chick flick like last time, is it? I don't think I can stand another two hours of people fawning over one another and 'happily ever after'." she asked, rolling her head backwards so that she watched him upside down. He leaned against the frame of the partially open door and murmured into the phone. Claire said something back. He put his hand against the phone and told her Claire's reply.

"She says it's called 'Dante and the Debutante'. The story is about a con man who's trying to steal some art but falls for the art collector's daughter. She insists it's not a chick flick only because Charlie wanted to see it." he finished, looking at her in expectation.

She bit her lip in indecision, rolling her head back to an upright position to stare at her workspace in defeat.

"Yeah, sure." she said, giving him a half smile over her shoulder. "Tell them we'll meet them at the theater."

He murmured into the phone again, laughing lightly at something Claire said before replying in turn. He said goodbye and pressed the 'End' button.

"Movie's at seven forty-five." he said, coming over and tossing the phone on the desk before placing his hands at the meeting of her neck and shoulders and starting to rub gently. She groaned in relief and let her head drop forward, her dark hair hanging around her face like a blackout curtain. "You need to get out more anyway. You're so tense, Claire said she's afraid you're going to become a hermit with how you're in here every waking moment."

"I'm trying to finish this thing, you know that." she said, leaning forward and crossing her arms on the table before resting her head on them. "I started this thing two days before the end of August. It's been just over three and a half months since I started this-this-this..."

"Baptism of fire?" he asked jokingly, but his voice was devoid of any mockery at her expense.

"It's only been four years How can I not _get this finished quickly?" she asked, pouting and staring at the mess before her-pictures, certificates and journals, all scattered across the desk. _

"Well, you can probably start by learning to organize things." he replied, also staring at the desk. "Also, I've heard that going to the cinema with childhood friends help relieve massive amounts of stress."

"Really." she half asked, half stated.

"Mmm hmm." he said, taking her hand and pulling her out of the chair. "It's scientifically proven." he finished, raising his brows as if to prove his point to her.

"Uh huh." she said, tugging at his grip on her hand gently. "I really should get back to-"

"Nope." he stated, grabbing her other upper arm to prevent her from turning back to her work. "Tonight, you and I are going to the cinema with Claire and Charlie and we are going to have fun and you are going to enjoy it, if I have to force it down your throat."

"I can see the headlines now 'Woman murdered in cinema by husband! Cause of death: fun forced down throat.'" she said and he burst into uncontrollable laughter, which, of course, made her giggle madly until she, too, was lost in mirth.


	5. Ashes to Ashes

Title: Of Pride and Prejudice

Rating: R (just in case)

Pairing: Sawyer/Ana WIP

Summary: None of them could remember when their rivalry had truly started.

Warnings: Possibly a little Shoone-like incesty stuff but I'm not sure if that really counts cause their not related...? Also, this chapter may have a little violence or gore.

Disclaimer: I own squat. If I owned Lost, Ana would be alive and she and Sawyer would be happily married with three small children.

Author's Note:Ok people. First off, sorry I took so long to update-I had to think of a way that this story would work. And that's where it gets complicated (for me). From here on out most of the chapters will be like episodes of Lost, just with the kids in HS. I'll put the title of the chapter at the beginning, as well as whom it's about.

Eg: Collision: An AnaLucia Centric Chapter (not really a chapter but needed an example)

Also, flashbacks will be italics in these chapters but have nothing to do with the interludes.

Ashes to Ashes: A Boone Centric Chapter

_Teresa de Cadomo was a pretty young woman, not gorgeous but not exactly bland either. At twenty three years, Teresa had long blackish-brown hair that she always kept in a braid and eyes so dark you couldn't say what color they were. But they were always full of life, Boone remembered. Full of life...until she'd died. Boone remembered that, too._

_When she'd died._

_When he was five-so long ago it seemed-his mother introduced him to Teresa quickly, explaining that he was to listen to whatever she said or he would be in trouble before she'd left for work. Teresa had crouched down to his level, looked at him with those dark, beautiful eyes and said _

_"Hello, Boone. I am sure we get along nice." Her dulcet voice reminded Boone of a cold winter day spent wrapped in a blanket with hot chocolate, days before his father had left he and his mother. Days when he'd been truly happy, before his mother had just begun to ignore him whenever they were in the same room. _

_It made him hate Teresa immediately._

_"We be friends, hmmm?" she asked, in that voice again. Boone grinned wickedly._

_"We be friends." he mocked and she nodded, straightening back up and nodding at him before holding out her hand to him. He grabbed it-probably a little tighter than was truly necessary-and followed her down the hall._

_------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

_It had been a full year since Sabrina Carlisle had hired Teresa to be Boone's nanny and Boone had made Teresa's life miserable ever since. Claire didn't understand his hatred of the woman, Kate kept warning Boone to stop or someone would get hurt and Jack just kept his nose out of it (at the order of his father) despite wanting to help._

_Now, six year old Boone sat at the top of the stairs in his house. It was a massive set of stairs, wide and open, seventy five steps wide (Boone had counted once, before his mother had yelled at him not to play on the stairs), fanning out even wider at the bottom like one of his mother's evening dresses that hung in her closet._

_And so now he sat in the middle at the top of the stairs, his six year old fingers gripping the lip of the stair beneath him loosely as he rocked forward and back. Keeping his eyes on the foyer at the bottom of the stairs, Boone opened his mouth and yelled one word._

_"Teresa!"_

_He was silent then and listened to the rapid shuffle of her worn Keds on the green marble floor. He watched as she rounded the corner of the stairs and began her ascent. She looked different now-her once beautiful hair was cut shorter after Boone "accidentally" dropped a large wad of gum in it while she was sleeping and she looked haggard-bags hung beneath her eyes and, though once bright, they no longer shone with the light they used to._

_Halfway up the stairs, Teresa looked up and spotted Boone sitting at the top. An angry look crossed her face and she began to speak rapidly in Spanish as she stomped up the stairs. Her Spanish became English as she approached Boone and grabbed him by his ear._

_"You not hear your mother, Boone?" she snapped, dragging him painfully down the hall way. "You don't play at the top of those stairs. You fall and break your neck, usted mocoso pequeño (you little brat)!"_

_Angrily, Teresa shoved him into his room and stood menacingly in the doorway._

_"You don't do that again or I tell your mother!" she snapped. "All these other times, I don't tell-now you have last time."_

_And with that, she slammed the door closed with a bang and walked back to whatever she had been doing. Boone waited a full five minutes before he opened his door slowly and peeked out-Teresa was truly gone from the upstairs floor. He moved slowly, like a predator, avoiding the creaky spots in the hallway floor so as not to alert her._

_Slowly-slowly-he went, until he'd made it to the top of the stairs and perched himself upon the lip again, fingers loosely gripping it. He took a deep breath-two, three-and called out again._

_"Teresa!"_

_And this time, she came running like a bat out of hell, skidding on the marble floor as she rounded the corner and tearing up the stairs. Again she looked up at the halfway mark and she glared up at Boone as she stopped._

_But as she began to stalk up the stairs again, her left foot slipped out from under her and Boone watched, in horror, as she teetered on the lip of the stair she was on. Her arms waved about wildly, looking for something to grab ahold of but she was in the middle of the vast staircase and soon began to fall. Her terrified eyes glanced on Boone, who was gripping the stair lip so hard his knuckles were white, and she screamed as she fell backwards. Boone's knuckles, if possible, turned even whiter than before as she rolled heels over head down the massive set of stairs. A loud crack sounded, Teresa stopped screaming and she tumbled down a few more stairs before landing at the bottom with a loud thump._

_Boone stared down at her still body, neck twisted at such an angle he knew in his heart that she was dead. And as he stared down at her, he managed to utter one word, in such a small voice it was barely a whisper._

_"Teresa?"_

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_"Can you tell me what happened, sweetheart?" _

_Boone clung to his mother, who had positioned him on her hip, and looked at the woman standing in front of him._

_"Boone, honey, tell Captain Michaels what happened." Sabrina urged him and Boone looked between his mother and Captain Michaels before removing his thumb from his mouth and starting to talk._

_"I-I-I was in my-my room, playing Spiderman and doing all these cool flips with the figures and making all these 'grrr' sounds cause there was a ti-"_

_"Boone, we don't need specifics." Sabrina snapped at her son, drawing a confused and sad look from the police woman._

_"IwasplayingandIheardascreamandIranoutandsawheratthebottomofthestairsandshewouldn'tmove." Boone said, all in one breath, before burying his face in his mother's shoulder again._

_  
"Thank you, sweetheart." the police woman said softly, turning a page on her notebook and scribbling something down. She ripped it off and handed it to Sabrina. "Thank you very much for your cooperation, Ms. Carlisle. That is my direct number at the station and my home number if you need anything else. Please don't hesitate to call me at any time."_

_"Thank you, Captain." Sabrina said stiffly._

_Boone removed his face from his mother's shoulder in time to watch them zip up Teresa's body bag. Somebody sobbed loudly, but mutedly, in the background_

_Her lifeless eyes stared back at him even after the zipper closed over her face._

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Boone snapped awake, sitting straight up, as a loud clap of thunder sounded, shaking the entire house. Gasping for breath, Boone glances wildly around the darkened room, bleary eyes making the shadows not what they seem. Reaching toward his beside table, he flicked on the lamp and sighed in relief as the warm light made the shadows disperse.

Rubbing his face to get rid of the sleep induced confusion, Boone thought about his dream.

'God, I haven't dreamt of Teresa in years.' he thought to himself. 'And never so vividly. And the sobbing thing was new...'

Boone trailed off as he noticed that the sobbing had continued, despite his waking.

Furrowing his brow, Boone pushed the covers aside and shivered as his bare legs met the chilly air of the house. He moved slowly towards his door and opened it with a small _snick!_ of the lock. He thrust his head out into the hallway, his body following shortly after, and crept down the hallway after the sound.

He soon found it's source.

Shannon sat crumpled on the floor by the phone, sobbing into her hands as the phone swung by it's cord. Grabbing the phone, Boone held it to his ear but stopped before he said "Hello?", hanging the phone in the cradle. Crouching down next to Shannon, he reached out to touch her and she jumped when he did, looking up at him with a tear streaked face.

"Shan?"

She just looked at him like she was trying not to cry anymore.

"Shan, what happened? Why are you cr-"

"Your mmmm-mom just called from the h-h-hospital." Shannon hiccuped, leaving the phrase hanging in the suddenly thick night air.

"Is she okay?"

"Well, she wouldn't have been the one calling if she wasn't, would she?" Shannon snapped angrily and she hyperventilated for a moment before it turned back to tears and she threw herself at Boone and buried her face in his neck.

"Shannon, tell me what happened." Boone said, lifting Shannon from the floor and walking with her down the hall to his room. Sitting her on the bed, he sat beside her until her tears had calmed to a mild sniffling before he asked again.

"My dad wa-was in an accident-in a car accident. He was in-is in surgery?" she said, sounding unsure. They sat in silence for a moment.

"We should go." Boone said, startling them both with a voice so thick he wasn't sure it was his. He cleared his throat loudly before he spoke again. "To the hospital. We should go to the hospital."

Ana sighed and placed her forehead softly against the windowpane again, watching as the streaks of rain made her room an underwater tank. Something was wrong...very, very wrong. That's what her gut was telling her and that's why her eyes wouldn't close. They were afraid that if they blinked something important would be gone. She hugged her knees tighter to her chest and tried to make herself sleepy again but it didn't work. So Ana stood, stretched like a cat and left her room.

Sayid awoke to the uneasy feeling of being observed and he opened his eyes They fell upon the dark, still form of his sister in the middle of his room. Sayid blinked a few times to make sure he wasn't still asleep but when Ana didn't fade the uneasy feeling grew.

"Ana?" he asked, furrowing his eyebrows in question. Ana just cocked her head at him and only very slightly.

Then, she walked over to his bed, got in and yanked the covers back over her body.

"Ana, is something wrong?" Sayid asked in her ear, worried now. Ana hadn't climbed into his bed like this since she was eight.

But Ana remained quiet despite his questions. Slowly, she reached her hand back, grabbed his wrist and wrapped it around her waist, snuggling back into his warmth, before closing her eyes in sleep. Sayid just watched the back of her head until the inky black of her hair gave way to sleep.

The lighter made a quick _snickt_ sound as he lit the cigarette dangling from his mouth. He inhaled slowly, savoring the bittersweet taste of the nicotine for a moment before blowing it into the air of the dawn. For the last week, he'd sat like this on the porch of their one floor house, lighting and puffing. Smoking and thinking. Something was biting at the back of his mind but he couldn't put his finger on it and it was driving him nu-

"Jim?"

James Ford spun around so fast he dropped the cigarette onto the cracking concrete walkway leading up to the house. His sister, Libby, stood in the doorway in her pajamas. She pushed the screen door open and walked out, letting it slam into the door frame of the house loudly. James had lit another cigarette by the time Libby reached him and was leaning on the banister instead when she reached up and plucked the cigarette from his mouth.

"Hey." James objected with not much force behind it.

"Whatcha thinkin' about Jim?" Libby asked, leaning against the opposite rail and taking a puff of the cigarette.

"'Bout how much I'm missing my cigarette cause my snotty little sis stole the damn thing." James said, elliciting a laugh from Libby. Her laughter slowly trickled off and they stood in silence for a moment, the only sound made when Libby sucked in a breath of smoke.

"No, but seriously." she said, wordlessly repeating the question. James just sat on the steps again, running a hand through his hair before replying.

"You should go inside, Lib. You're gonna catch your death in them pj's." he deadpanned, ignoring her question.

"Ahhh." Libby drawled knowingly, sitting down beside him and taking another few puffs on the cigarette. "I know what you're thinkin' 'bout."

"You shouldn't be smoking that." James snapped, grabbing the cigarette back from a startled Libby.

"It wasn't your fault." Libby nearly whispered as he flicked the cigarette away. He flinched away from her hand on his shoulder so she stood up from the step. "We both know that what happened-it wasn't your fault."

And with that, Libby fled into the house, letting the screen door slam again as she did so.

"Yes it was..." James said, his lighter making the _snickt_ again as he flicked it open and held the flame up to another white stick.

Hurley and Cindy were arguing quickly in Spanish when Cindy spotted Boone and Shannon enter the waiting room.

"Hurley, la mirada." Cindy said, nodding her head towards the duo. "Se Boone y Shannon."

"¿Qué hacen ellos aquí?" Hurley asked no one, watching as Boone spotted them and essentially carried Shannon across the room.

"¡Yo no sé!" Cindy snapped, readjusting her sling.

"Hey, guys." Boone said, setting an awfully quiet Shannon down in the chair next to Hurley. He turned back to Hurley and Cindy, doing a double take when he saw Cindy's condition. "Cindy, what happened to your arm?"

"I, uh, I fell down the stairs." Cindy said, uncomfortable at the way Boone was studying her. "I tripped over Vincent cause he was sleeping at the top."

"Does it hurt?" Boone asked.

"As much as can be expected. But, yeah, my brother here thinks our family's cursed or something cause of what happened tonight." Cindy said, nodding her head at Hurley.

"I never said cursed, I said unlucky-"

"Ocho ochenta, pendejo." Cindy snapped nastily at Hurley who started to argue with her in Spanish again.

"Wai-guys!" Boone tried to say over the arguing siblings without disturbing the oddly quiet waiting room.

Cindy snapped something at Hurley a final time which made Hurley go red in the face and leave quickly, almost knocking Boone over in his haste to disappear.

"What did you say to him?" Boone asked, sitting next to Cindy in Hurley's chair.

"Nothing important." Cindy said, glaring the way her brother had fled until something crossed her features and she turned back to Boone. "Wait-why're you guys here?"

"Our dad-"

A soft whooshing sound caught Boone's attention suddenly and Shannon's quiet sobbing behind him stopped, making him turn towards her. Then, something beyond the back of Shannon's blonde head caught his eye...his mother stood by the door, talking quietly with a man Boone recognized as Jack's father, Christian Shephard. The spoke for a few more moments before Christian caught sight of Boone, who stood, and said something to Sabrina.

Boone knew that when Shannon's sobbing broke the silence of the waiting room, it was justified. He could see it in his mother's eyes.

_"Boone, don't wrinkle my skir-Boone, let go of my skirt." Sabrina grunted, trying to pry nine year old Boone's tiny hand from her navy blue skirt. Finally, in anger she smacked his hand, quickly and sharply, which made him recoil suddenly._

_"Mama?" Boone asked around his thumb, which was stuck in his mouth as far as he could get it._

_"Boone, you're too old to be sucking your thumb." Sabrina said, jarring his teeth roughly when she yanked on his wrist._

_"Mama?" he asked again as she stood straight up and smothed down her suit._

_"What is it Boone?" she asked absentmindedly._

_"What if he doesn't like me?"_

_At that, Sabrina first picked off a stray thread on her suit then leaned down to Boone's level._

_"I'm sure he'll absolutely love you, sweetie." she said, still trying not to wrinkle her skirt. A horn honked and Sabrina straightened quickly, spinning around and laying her eyes on a deep blue cadillac that approached them. Boone just hid behind his mother and gripped her skirt in one hand and stuck his thumb back in his mouth._

_"Boone-"_

_Boone immediately let go of the skirt and stuffed his hands in his pockets._

_The car pulled slowly to a halt and the back door opened. A man with brown hair and bright blue eyes got out of the car, dressed much less formally than Sabrina and Boone in khakis and a bright blue polo shirt._

_"Sabrina!" he said, smiling widely and embracing her in a hug. "You look stunning, as usual."_

_"It's nothing, Adam, really." Sabrina said, giggling like a schoolgirl and waving her hand in dismissal. Adam looked down at Boone and crouched down to his level._

_"And who is this dashing young man?" Adam asked but Boone just buried his face in his mother's skirt._

_"This is Boone. Boone, this is Adam Rutherford." Sabrina said cheerily. Adam opened his mouth to say something but at that moment a shrill scream erupted from the open door of the car and they all turned to look._

_A shiny, blond bundle shot from the car at Adam, who scooped her up and held her to his chest._

_"What's wrong, princess?" Adam asked, trying to get the girl to look at him._


	6. Ashes to Ashes, Part 2

Okay so, apparently this thing was too long for one chapter and I didn't see it until now so this is the rest of the episode/chapter thing. From now on I'll just break it up into to acts so it's easier to read. Sorry bout that!

"_I-I-I thought you l-l-left m-me." Shannon mumbled into his chest. _

"Shannon, you know I wouldn't do that." Adam said softly. Boone watched this conversation with awe at the way Shannon and her father interacted, wondering why his mother never talked to him like that. Why she never spoke like she loved him.

"B-but mommy said she wouldn't leave either..." Shannon trailed off.

"Shannon, I-your mother..." But Adam couldn't figure out how to explain the topic to the eight year old and chose another tactic instead-diversion. "Shannon, this is Sabrina Carlisle." he said, nodding to Sabrina, who tried not to curl her lip at the little girl. "And this is Boone." Adam said, looking down at Boone.

Shannon looked down at Boone and squirmed in her father's arms until he let her down, at which point she walked over to Boone and scrutinized him. He felt like an amoeba under a microscope she looked at him so hard.

Suddenly and quickly, Boone was sitting on the ground, tears threatening to spill down his cheeks over his scraped palms.

Shannon had lashed out and pushed him to the ground.

"Shannon was kind of having...a nervous breakdown about it last night." Boone said quickly, trying to avoid Ana's glare at having just informed her that Mr. Rutherford had died the night before.

"So, is she okay?" Ana asked, trying not to let a shrillness pierce her voice (and possibly Boone's eardrums). "Now, I mean?"

"I don't know, I haven't seen her yet." Boone said, shrugging. "She was in her room when I got up and didn't come down for breakfast."

The sound of high heels click-clacking on the pavement of the driveway alerted the duo to Shannon's presence and they looked up to see her walk down the remainder of the driveway.

Both their mouths dropped open when they saw Shannon's outfit-a skimpy tank top and miniskirt that pushed the boundaries of indecent exposure-and how dolled up she was.

How different she looked than the Shannon they knew and loved.

Ana broke free of the trance first and shifted her bag onto her shoulder before approaching Shannon to give her condolences.

But before Ana could even say a syllable, Shannon shot a glare her way.

"Screw you." she said, breezing by the pair and down the street before they could blink.

When they could blink, it was in confusion and disbelief, and when they could walk, it was in silence.

"But what happened?"

"Is Shannon all right?"

"Are you okay?"

"When's the funeral?"

"Where _is_ Shannon?"

Boone sighed in exhaustion as his friends bombarded him with questions he didn't have answers for.

"He was in a car accident. I don't know. Yes, I'm fine. I don't know when the funeral is and I don't know where she is right now." Boone gave answers as best he could to the stares and looks of worry and sadness scattered around the table. "I will let you all know when the funeral and all of it's attachments are as soon as I know but right now, I don't. And I don't wanna talk about it anymore."

"But-" said a boy Boone didn't recognize and the blonde girl between him and Hurley elbowed him roughly in the gut.

"Sorry." she said, turning a light shade of pink and sinking lower into her chair before glowering at the boy beside her.

"Who are you again?" Kate asked and Hurley immediately perked up.

"Guys, this is Libby." he said proudly and there was a murmured chorus of 'Hello's and 'Hi's and one 'Han-gul' from around the table.

"Hi." Libby said, blushing an even darker shade of pink as she waved quickly at the group around the table.

_Please don't notice me._ Ana thought to herself. _Please don't noti-_

"Hey, I know you."

_Damn it._

"Hi. Libby." Ana said, forcing a smile and flashing it at Libby. "We met in the principal's office on the first day. I'm Ana."

"You were the girl with the anger management problems."

Ana just glared at Jack, who was trying not to laugh.

_Transvestite._ Ana mouthed when Hurley had grabbed Libby's attention again and Jack stopped chortling almost immediately.

"Would you stop _doing_ that!"

Everyone's heads turned to look at Claire, who was scooting away from the new boy with a bright red face.

"Claire-"

"He won't stop staring at me!" Claire snapped at Jack.

"Charlie, for god's sakes, you're freaking her out." Libby said, elbowing Charlie again so hard he hacked a few times before looking down and eating his lunch in silence.

"Sorry." he mumbled as Claire switched seats with Kate as quick as she possibly could.

The normally chatter-filled table was quiet as lunch was eaten that day.

"What is that?"

James looks up at a leggy blonde girl in a skimpy outfit and tries not to let his eyes bug out at how much of her legs are showing.

"It's a book." he said, turning back to the book. "And you're in my light, Sticks."

"Lightsticks?" the girl asked, confused. "What the hell is that?"

"Light comma Sticks." James explained, pointing at the girl's legs with his book. "As in those beautiful legs o' yours."

"So can I bum a cigarette?" the girl asked, sitting beside him on the stairs of the school.

"You eighteen?" he asks, not looking up from his book.

"Are you?" she snaps back.

"Yes, ma'am, I am." he says, studying the girl for a minute before giving in. "Aw, what the hell." he finished, tossing the pack at her. She pulls a stick from the carton and he lights it for her when she leans over to return the now empty pack.

"Thanks." the girl said and they smoked in silence for a few minutes. "I'm Shannon, by the way."

James hesitated a moment before answering her question.

"You can call me Sawyer, sweet cheeks."

"What are you reading?" Shannon asked, flicking the ash from her cigarette onto the ground.

James held up his copy of _Watership Down_ and Shannon's face lit up.

"Hey!" she exclaimed. "That's Ana's favorite book."

"Ana?" he asked raising his brow, intrigued about this new entity. Shannon looked almost guilty for a moment before she waved her hand in dismissal of his question.

"She's no one." Shannon said. "Nobody important."

She took a drag on the cigarette and repeated her last sentence as if she were trying to convince herself of it.

"Nobody important."

"Shannon! Open the damn door!"

Ana leaned against the wall opposite Shannon's room, watching in silence as Boone pounded on the door angrily.

"Shannon, we just wanna talk!" he yelled, pounding even harder and making Ana wince when the wood cracked a little bit.

"Shannon, would you open the door!"

The door flew open revealing a seething Shannon.

"Thank-"

"Shut up, you fascist mama's boy." Shannon snapped, moving into the hallway.

"Shan-"

"You too you two bit whore." Shannon hissed, eyes narrowing. But it served it's purpose. "I don't want to talk to either of you ever again, d'you hear me? So stop bothering me and just leave me alone. I don't need either of you."

And with that, Shannon turned on her heel and stormed back into her room, slamming the door loudly.

Ana and Boone stood in the hall in silence for a moment before Boone turned back to the door and began pounding on it again.

Ana just slunk away and was gone for an hour before Boone noticed and began hollering at Shannon for that as well.

_"He's someone very important to me, Boone." Sabrina said, adjusting ten year old Boone's tiny tie around his neck. "And he should be to you too. That's why we're getting married today." _

Sabrina adjusted the tie once more before turning to her own preparations. Boone pulled at the too tight tie around his neck, agitated.

"Do you know what your job is today Boone?" she asked, smoothing out her gown and fixing her hair She stopped when Boone didn't answer. "Boone, do you know what your job is today?" she asked again, glaring at him in the mirror.  
"I-I have to carry the rings down the row-"

"Aisle."

"-down the aisle." he finished.

"And?" she asked, resuming her touch ups.

Silence.

"And?" she asked again, her voice getting dangerously low.

"And I have to walk Shannon back down the aisle cause she's the flower girl." Boone said, trying to keep the annoyance seeping into his voice.

"Good boy." Sabrina said with an air of finality that said Boone could leave.

So Boone left the bride room, closing the door quietly and turning to find Kate and Shannon staring at him from across the hallway. Shannon whispered something to Kate and Boone froze immediately. When the girls whispered something bad happened to him, something always bad happened to him when the girls whispered.

Boone remained frozen to the spot as Kate sauntered up to him and looked him in the eyes before leaning in and kissing him dead on the lips.

What seemed like an eternity later, Kate pulled away. Boone made a noise of disgust and began rubbing his lips raw as Kate skipped back over to Shannon who just said

"I told you so."

Jack and Claire sat next to each other in the chapel during Mr. Rutherford's funeral, Claire in her black dress and Jack in his tuxedo. Claire is red eyed and sniffs every other second until Jack leans over.

"You okay?" he whispers in her ear.

She looks at him strangely for a moment before nodding in response. Jack straightened back up and smiled a few moments later when Claire leaned over

"You?" she whispered.

"I'm more worried abou-"

"Shhh!" someone hissed and Jack and Claire snapped up straight, looking ahead.

"I'm more worried about Shannon." Jack said, softer this time, nodding his head up toward the front where Shannon sits in a daze.

Claire just smiles sadly and places her hand in Jack's, gripping it for all she was worth.

Ana stood in the back of the church, watching the funeral from the shadows. She'd gone for the simple approach for the funeral-black dress and hair pulled back into a french braid that falls gently down her back.

She doesn't lean against the wall, just stands on her own for the remainder of the funeral and when the mass ends Ana crosses herself before she slides back into the shadows and disappears.

Shannon remains sitting as Boone helps bear Adam's casket down the aisle.

"Shannon?"

She looks up into Sayid's concerned face and he sees in her eyes that she's already half gone.

"What?" she tries to snap, but her voice cracks loudly.

"We should go." he says soothingly.

And Shannon allows him to pull her standing and support her down the aisle.

At the graveyard, the priest pray over the body and the casket is lowered into the earth.

Shannon's dazed look has changed to an ice cold deadness as she tosses a handful of earth into the hole, turns and walks away.

_"By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride." the priest said and everyone clapped as Adam and Sabrina kissed. _

"May I present Mr. And Mrs. Adam Rutherford." the priest finished and the two began the walk down the aisle, followed by the groomsmen and bridesmaids.

Finally, Boone approached Shannon and held his arm out, which she locked onto like leech and proceeded to drag him down the aisle with.

Michael noticed as Ana arrived at the wake and he noticed how she looked broken. Her hair was coming out of it's braid, her eyes were red and puffy and her eyes didn't sparkle like they did normally.

He watched as Ana stood in the door and looked through the room until her eyes fell on Shannon, at which point she stalked across the room and proceeded to lead Shannon out by her elbow.

"Michael?"

Michael noticed but he paid no mind as Cindy continued their conversation from mere moments before Ana had arrived.

Ana pulled Shannon into a room adjacent to the main one and closed the door.

"What are you-"

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing, Shannon?" Ana hissed, turning on her best friend.

"Surviving." Shannon replied, narrowing her eyes at Ana when she snorted in amusement. "What's so funny?"

"You're not surviving." Ana said, shaking her head. "You're _running_."

"I am _not_ runni-"

"Pushing people who care about you awa-"

"It's not like _you_ would understand." Shannon snapped, her voice rising in pitch. Ana's brow furrowed in anger.

"You know what? Since I'm _so_ stupid, why don't you explain it to me, huh?" Ana asked and Shannon was silent, glaring at Ana for her questions. "Because you _can't_. I never even _knew_ my father, Shannon. You had fourteen years with yours. Be thankful at least for that."

"He was all I had." Shannon said quietly through grit teeth.

The look on Ana's face-in her eyes-made Shannon's blood freeze.

"Don't you _dare_ say something like that." Ana hissed, stalking toward Shannon, who began to back away. "Don't. You. _Dare._"

Shannon felt a chair on her calves and sat down hard.

"You have so many people out there who love you, it _sickens_ me that you toss them aside like garbage. You have Boone, and me-" Ana pointed back toward the door as she continued. "-every single one of those people you call 'friend', loves you so much it friggin _hurts_. It _hurts_, Shannon, it hurts me inside to see you in pain like this. So don't you say that you have no one because then you're a liar."

Shannon stood from the chair she sat in and stepped around Ana, walking to the door and opening it. She stopped a moment, in the doorway, and turned to look back.

"If I'm a liar-" Shannon said, her voice breaking ever so slightly as if she was trying to hold back tears. "-then you're one, too."

And with that, Shannon left a hurt Ana alone in the room.

Ana sat down hard in the chair Shannon had been sitting in moments before and looked around the empty room before she broke down sobbing.

The next day Boone stood alone at the end of the driveway, waiting for both Ana and Shannon.

Neither of them showed.

The End


	7. The Tangled Web, Part 1

Title: Of Pride and Prejudice

Rating: R (just in case)

Pairing: Sawyer/Ana WIP

Summary: None of them could remember when their rivalry had truly started.

Warnings: Drug use (probably gonna be a constant cause of Sawyer and his cigarettes), mild swearing (same thing-Sawyer),

Disclaimer: I own squat. If I owned Lost, Ana would be alive and she and Sawyer would be happily married with three small children.

Author's Note: Thank you guys so much for the wonderful reviews. Becky, I still think you're the teen Sana queen. I'll just be the princess. Also, from now on unless a character calls him James, Sawyer will be known as Sawyer. Also, for some reason, my head has decided that I want to get enough of these out to lead up to the Christmas episode so I can post it by then, so I'm gonna go pound out about twelve or thirteen of these things in the span of a month and a half and hope I don't die from lack of everything my body needs to live. Carry on! Also, for those of you who don't know what Ouutburst is it's a board game that's sort of like Family Feud but you have to blurt out the answers as quick as you can before the timer goes off.

The Tangled Web: A Sawyer Centric Chapter

_Three small, blond children sit in the back of a squad car. _

_Elizabeth, the only girl of the trio, sits by the left window. She is the middle sibling at five minutes and eight seconds older than her fraternal twin Charles and four years younger than her other brother James. Elizabeth, known as Libby to her brothers, sits in the back of the squad car, staring blankly ahead and absentmindedly stroking Charlie's hair._

_Charles, Libby and James' younger brother, lies curled across most of the seat, his head in Libby's lap. He snores softly as Libby strokes his hair and snuggles closer to her frail form._

_James, the oldest, sits alone on the right side of the car, glaring out the window. Glaring at the house that glared back at him with dark windows for eyes and and open doorway of a mouth that screamed in fear at what had happened within it, early in the morning._

_Two cops stand outside the car-one male, one female-talking for a few minutes before one of the cops gently knocks the female on the shoulder and she smiles at him before walking around and getting into the front of the squad car._

_"You kids okay?" she asked into the rearview mirror then laughed at herself softly when there was no response. "I'm sorry, loves. That was a dumb thing to ask. O'course you're not okay. Well, we are gonna take a quick trip down to the station and then we'll see what we can do, yeah?"_

_The trio remained silent as the woman started the car and pulled away from the curb of the house. The only motion in the backseat as they drove away was James as he squirmed around to look out the back window at the rapidly shrinking house._

_Then, they turned a corner and the house was gone._

_----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

_At the police station, the three were seperated and questioned seperately. But, despite who questioned them, they shared the same terrified story never flinching as the retold their personal nightmare over and over. Except James. James was being difficult._

_"So, James..." began Dr. Hume. Dr. Hume was a cheerful looking woman in her mid-thirties, with long blackish-brown hair and hazelly green eyes. Her lilting accent usually hid when her voice shook and she stood at five four. "You wanna tell me what happened last night?"_

_James just kept glaring at the same spot on the table he'd been glaring at for the last twenty minutes._

_"You know, you're gonna burn a hole in that table you keep looking at it like that." she said, hoping to get some sort of response. Anything at all-she wasn't even sure if he was breathing anymore. She sighed when he didn't respond._

_"All right, I'll tell you a story then." she said, flipping the folder in front of her closed and relaxing back into her chair. "I got a son, 'bout your age, he's a slecher like no one I ever met, my boy. I think he gets it from his da, the dobber. Left me right after Des was outta my nether regions, went off with some stick thin blond with legs a mile long. Anyway, so one day, Des decides that he-"_

_"She said 'Stay under the bed.' "_

_Dr. Hume blinked at the sudden interruption, then registered that he'd said something._

_"What did you say?" she asked and he looked up at her, sending chills down her spine with his haunted, sea blue eyes._

_"She said 'Stay under the bed.' "_

_BANG!_

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**BANG!**

"She said 'Stay under the bed.' " Sawyer said as he was jolted awake. He saw a ruler pressed down on his desk, right in front of his nose. Furrowing his brow, he raised his head, following the hand attached to said ruler up until he saw the angry face of his English teacher, Mr. Gale.

"That's wonderful, James. So kind of you to join the rest of us in the real world." Mr. Gale said and a few students snickered behind their hands. "Since you apparently can't stay awake in my class, perhaps you should give yourself a bedtime." he finished, turning away and walking back up to the chalkboard before continuing to write on it.

"Whatever you say, oh great and powerful Oz." Sawyer muttered, grabbing his pencil and starting to jot down the notes on the board.

"Perhaps, you can stay awake better in detention, Mr. Ford." Mr. Gale said over his shoulder, still writing notes about _Of Mice and Men_, the book they'd been assigned to read. "See me after class."

Mr. Gale finished writing on the board and turned back to his desk, picking up the worn copy of _Of Mice and Men_.

"Open your books to page twenty three." Mr. Gale said sharply and there was a rustle as each student opened to the page.

Mr. Gale began to drone as he read from the book and Sawyer felt his eyelids grow heavy once more.

After class, Sawyer watched his fellow classmates file out of the room until he was left alone with Mr. Gale.

"I think four weeks ought to do it, don't you James?" Mr. Gale said out of nowhere and Sawyer furrowed his brow.

"Eh?" he asked, confused.

"Four weeks of detention." Mr. Gale said, looking up at Saywer as he was filling in the detention slip. "Unless, of course, you wanted more than that?"

"Four weeks is fine, thanks." Sawyer sneered and at Mr. Gale's look he cleared his throat nervously and hastily added, "Sir."

"Very well. Glad we could come to an agreement, James. I'll see you after school." Gale said, holding the slip out for Sawyer to take. Sawyer grabbed the small slip less than gently and stalked out of the classroom, seething.

"_Glad we could come to an agreement_." Sawyer mocked, looking down at the slip. "Agreement, my ass."

"What's got you so blue in the balls, cowboy?"

Sawyer turned and saw a pretty brunette with green eyes and a peppering of freckles across her nose leaning against the wall, clutching her books to her chest and cocking her head at him in question.

"What's it to you, Freckles?" he said, smirking.

"Curiosity." she said, pushing off the wall and approaching him.

"Curiosity killed the cat, sweetheart." Sawyer drawled as she approached him.

"I must've missed the memo. I was never much one for organization." she said, holding her hand out to him. "I'm Kate."

"Sawyer." he said, stuffing the detention slip in his pocket and ignoring her hand which quickly fell back to her side.

"Sawyer? I thought your name was Jam-"

"My name's Sawyer." he snapped and Kate looked affronted.

"Jesus, I was just trying to-"

"Yeah, well, don't try." Sawyer snapped. "You don't know me and my name is what I damn well say it is."

"You're an asshole." Kate snapped, turning and stalking down the hall.

"Yeah, well, I'm a complex guy, sweetheart!" Sawyer yelled after her before turning and going the opposite direction, desperately in need of a cigarette.

Kate watched as a girl four rows up applied her second-no, wait...third-_third_ layer of pearlescent shimmer powder to her face, on top of the goop she had just applied. Kate scrunched her nose up in disgust as it began itching. Great, _now_ the powder was floating back here (she could almost see the minute sparkly bits floating through the air, baring their viscious teeth as they came her way) and aggravating her allergies. Kate wiped at her nose as the itching grew worse and the blond girl-Nikki Somethingorother-snapped her compact shut with a small puff of powder, tucking it away inside her tiny mockup of a handbag.

"Kathryn!" a voice yelled in her ear and Kate's knee shot up abruptly, smacking her funny bone on the underside of the table.

"Son of a BI-" Kate began, but was cut off as Boone slapped his hand across her mouth. Kate made a small noise of pain and licked at Boone's hand as the tingling feeling in her leg began to fade.

"Wha-_gross_!" Boone said, realizing what the wetness on his hand was and yanking it away from her face to wipe it on her shirt sleeve in disgust. "That was so juvenile, Kate."

"It worked, didn't it?" she asked, grinning as he gave her an angry look. "What did you want anyway?"

"I asked what you wanted to do with your life." Boone said again, watching as Kate's eyes flicked back to Nikki something for a few moments before coming back to him.

"Something that doesn't involve three layers of shimmery powder on my face." Kate said, scrunching up her nose again as she looked back at Boone, trying hard not to sneeze.

"Kate, c'mon now." Boone groaned. "Be serious."

"I _am_ being serious, Boone! Honest to god-how..." Kate stopped, concentrating and wiggling her nose before continuing. "...can someone...wear that much...ma-ma-makeup..."

Kate sneezed suddenly and loudly, drawing looks from around the room before continuing her sentence as if nothing had happened.

"And still have clear skin?"

"Maybe you should be a dermatologist. You could instruct people not to wear three layers of powder on their faces." Boone suggested as he watched Kate's interest go back to Nikki something.

"But, Boone, don't you understand?" Kate asked, looking back at him and waving her arms slightly. "It's not _just_ powder! It's _shimmery_ powder!"

"There's a difference?" Boone asked and Kate glared at him for a moment before turning back to her "Nikki Somethingorother watching".

"Or a phone operator-you're good at dealing with annoying people. Oh, wait...sorry. You're good at _annoying _people. My bad." Boone said, trying to get a rise out of her. "And you wouldn't have to wear any makeup at all because no one would see you."

Nothing.

"Maybe you should be a serial killer-you could go around whacking people's limbs off with a machete." Boone said calmly, shuffling the stack of college pamphlets before him on the table, waiting for what he'd said to her to sink in.

"Yeah, sure, whateve-WHAT?!" Kate's head spun around so fast he was in awe that she didn't get whiplash. Boone grinned wickedly at Kate's shocked look and leaned back in his seat with a confident air about him.

"Took you long enough."

"I wanna be a writer." Kate said, now firmly in the moment as she pulled half of her hair back into a loose bun. Boone couldn't help but think of how beautiful she looked, even with a look that was so simple.

_WARNING! WARNING! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! She's your best friend-you shouldn't be thinking about her like that!_

So Boone just shook his head to rid himself of the vision and listen to Kate talk animatedly about wanting to be a writer.

"Do you do anything besides read?"

Sawyer sighed in a mixture of annoyance and relief when he heard Shannon's voice. Annoyance because she interrupts his reading time and relief because she keeps coming back regardless of his hints that he wants her to leave him be.

"Do you do anything besides stand there and look pretty, Sticks?" he snarked back and the look on Shannon's face made him chuckle.

"Jerk off." she said, settling herself beside him and stealing his cigarette. Again.

"I'm starting to think you're just coming for the fags, darlin'." Sawyer said and Shannon grinned wickedly, blowing smoke at him.

"You wanna watch your phrasing around me, blue eyed boy." Shannon said, licking her lips suggestively. "I'm pretty naughty when I put my mind to it."

"_Really_?" Sawyer asked, flashing his dimples.

"Mmmmhmmm." Shannon said slowly, licking her lips again. She closed her eyes and took a long drag on the cigarette, puffing smoke rings into the air and listening to Sawyer turn the pages in his book.

"Why are you here?"

Shannon blinked and looked at him, confused at his random question.

"What?"

Sawyer took the cigarette back and puffed on it a few times.

"Why are you here? I know it's not my-" Sawyer inhaled the smoke and then blew it out as he thought of a phrase to use. "-my _stimulatin'_ company. You don't seem the type-no offense" he said, putting his hands up in defense when Shannon began to argue. "And this certainly ain't a book club. Or Smokers Anonymous."

"I-" Shannon came up short. "I don't know."

"Don't you got any of your own friends?" he asked, dog earing the page of his book and placing it beside him on the step.

"Not anymore. Not since-" her voice cracked and she wiped quickly at her face. "Not anymore."

"Is 'Ana-who's-favorite-book-is-also-_Watership Down_' one of these former friends, then?" he asked.

"Yeah." Shannon sighed, placing her forehead on her hands and trying not to cry. "The best."

Sawyer couldn't help but feel sad for the younger girl when she began to sob, so he moved closer and cautiously placed a soothing hand on her back. You never knew with women-one minute they'd be in tears, the next they'd bite your damn hand off. Slowly he began to rub his hand in circles and sat there with her as she wept for what she'd thrown away.

Jack never saw it coming.

The moment he'd made the comment, everyone's eyes had widened in shock and there was a loud crack.

Jack was on the ground before they could blink.

"What the _fuck_, Ana?" Jack yelled, rubbing his jaw and glancing up at the seething latina standing over him.

"Don't you _ever_ insult my best friend like that again, Shephard, or next time you won't be awake to ask why."

"All I said was-"

Ana lashed out at Jack before he could finish. The others watched in shock as Ana and Jack pummeled each other until Sayid, Boone and Kate snapped out of their daze.

Quickly, Sayid grabbed his sister around the waist as best he could and pulled as Kate and Boone tried to pry Ana out of Jack's hands.

Unfortunately, neither of the two combatants were planning on stopping fighting anytime soon and Boone stumbled away from Jack with a bloody nose as Kate fell to the floor, knocking her head on a chair. Sayid grunted in pain but held his grip when Ana elbowed him in the stomach as she was flailing.

"SHEPHARD! CORTEZ!"

Jack had been about to jump on Ana again when the principal had arrived and Ana took advantage of their close proximity, kicking out at Jack a final time and nailing him dead center in the lower back, making him grunt and fall forward.

The principal grabbed Ana's flailing leg by her ankle and glared dangerously at the young woman before dropping the leg and turning to Jack, who still knelt on the floor.

"Both of you, in my office." said the principal, pointing out of the lunchroom as she helped Jack stand. "You wait there while I make sure the repercussions of your little 'lover's spat' are taken care of." she finished, turning to a bloody Boone and a dazed Kate as Jack stalked away and Sayid dragged his sister after him.

"Shannon?"

Shannon turned at the soft inquiry and saw Sun gazing at her in interest, her books held tightly to her chest.

"Yeah?" Shannon asked, feigning nonchalance as she turned back to her locker and mimicked looking for something.

"We missed you at lunch again today." Sun said, a small bit of questioning underlaid in her voice. Shannon dropped her history book in her locker with a loud clunk that made them both jump before answering.

"Yeah, well, I had places to be, so..." she said, trying to fill her voice with some sort of venom but failing and trailing off instead

"Why do you do this to yourself?" Sun asked and Shannon turned, anger apparent on her face.

"Do _what _exactly?" she snapped, making Sun take a step back.

"Put yourself through this...this self imposed exile." Sun said, furrowing her brow as she tried to lock eyes with Shannon, who avoided her gaze. "You have people who love you."

"I'm pretty sure that after what happened, no one loves me." Shannon said, turning back to her locker, catching her own eye in the locker mirror there.

_Liar._ her mind hissed at her.

"Where do you go?"

"What?"

"At lunch, where do you go?" Sun asked and Shannon just shrugged. "You shouldn't be by yourself, Shannon. You don't deserve to be alone."

"Thank you _so_ much for telling me what I desrve, Confucious." Shannon snapped and Sun just nodded at her silently.

"I hope you find your way soon, Shannon. There are people who miss you."

Shannon felt tears press at the back of her eyes as she heard Sun walk away with a grace that belied her nature and a wisdom beyond her years.

_"I think we'll take our chances, Ms. Colbert. We're very..._persistent_." the brunette woman said to the orphanage head._

_"Mrs. Romano, I don't think you understand-"_

_"We just want the one, madam." Mr. Romano said with an air of finality that made Ms. Colbert want to curl her lip at him. "Elizabeth."_

_Ms. Colbert bit the inside of her cheek in annoyance as she glared at the snobbish couple. Mrs. Romano was a spoiled brat and Mr. Romano was a stubborn jackass. Finally, after deducing that there was nothing she could do, she sighed._

_"Fine." she replied and Mrs. Romano's face lit up as she gripped her husband's hand tighter. "I'll go fetch, Libby."_

_"Elizabeth." Mrs. Romano said and Ms. Colbert momentarily froze as she rose from her seat but not so much that, when she started moving again, the couple noticed. Ms. Colbert left the pair in her office and walked toward where she knew Libby would be this time of day. As she reached the playroom, she saw Libby in her normal post, not actually playing with the other children but just observing them, jotting things down in a notebook Ms. Colbert had gotten her. Ms. Colbert walked, slid and tripped her way across the room to Libby, who looked up when she approached._

_"Come on, Libby." Ms. Colbert said, turning and leaving without looking back, knowing that the girl would follow. _

_That was the thing about the Ford children. They'd been seperated at least eight times in the course of four years and no matter what, they never reacted to it. If one of them was taken, the other two just went about their lives as if nothing had happened and the one who was going went quietly. But there was always an air of unfinished business around the three and, sure enough, one or two weeks later, she wasn't surprised when the one taken was brought back and they were reunited again._

_"Elizabeth!" Mrs. Romano exclaimed when they walked through the door. Libby held loosely to her notebook, pencil tucked behind her ear. "How are you, darling? Ready to head home?"_

_Libby just nodded, then stood quietly and at attention until everything was taken care of. Then, an overly excited Mrs. Romano and her less than overly excited husband led Libby out of the office and Ms. Colbert knew that she'd see Libby again in about two weeks. It was always that long for her._

_-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

_James was playing with Charlie when Ms. Colbert led Libby back into the play room, still clutching her notebook. She looked a little tired but she wore different clothes than the ones she'd worn when she'd left the orphanage. _

_Charlie was the first to spot Libby and his face lit up with a grin, making James turn to see what was there. Libby squinted at them in the bright light of the playroom, giving them a half-smile. Charlie pushed himself up and threw himself into his twin's arms, burying his face in her neck. Libby smiled wider and kissed his head gently before turning her gaze on James._

_"Always together..." she said, trailing off to let him finish their short mantra._

_"Never alone." he whispered, just like he did every time they were seperated then reunited._

Ana sat opposite Jack on the bench outside the principal's office, arms crossed defiantly over her chest, leg bouncing up and down in bored anticipation.

"You're a _bitch_, you know that?" Jack said, voice muffled as he held a tissue to his nose to stop it bleeding.

"Screw you, Jack." Ana snapped, her leg bouncing even more forcefully as she continued. "You just don't know when to fucking _stop_."

"And you don't know when to fucking let the fuck _go_, AnaLucia." Jack spat, yanking the tissue away from his nose. "You're still hung up on the fact that your dad left you."

"What the _hell_ does that have to do with Shannon, Jack?" Ana asked, the haze of red suddenly vanishing and leaving her sober at Jack's statement.

"You don't really know what it's like to have a father, Ana." Jack said, something dangerous flickering behind his eyes. "That's one thing you can't learn and it eats you up inside."

Ana was silent. She wanted to make a comment about Jack's own father, his overbearing prick of a father, but she couldn't. Because she knew what Jack said was true.

So she let the demons in her head begin their never-ending feast and sank further into the corner away from Jack.

"So, what happened?" Boone asked Ana cautiously, not wanting another broken body part today. His nose still hurt from where it had welcomed Jack's elbow

The five of them sat quietly in the back of the room, each with their own task at hand. Jack had laid his head on his forearms in exhaustion, Shannon was currently examining her nails, Kate was tapping her pencil nervously whille occassionally looking over at Boone who was sifting through college pamphlets again and Ana was sitting in her chair, glaring forward angrily. At his inquiry, she turned her glare on him and he began to fear for his life.

"Two months detention." she said, her face softening as she looked at Boone.

"I couldn't quite keep up with current events, what with the blood gushing out of my broken nose and all." he said, trying to make her smile but she winced instead.

"Sorry." she murmured, glancing at his black and blue nose.

"'s not your fault. Jack never should've said that about Shannon." he said, shrugging. "You just beat me to the punch."

He felt a small sense of accomplishment when Ana laughed half heartedly at his pun.

The door opened and Boone snapped to attention as Locke wheeled himself into the room, pulling the door closed after him. He wheeled himself behind the desk, pulling something out of his bag and placing it on his desk before coming around the desk and facing the class.

"I apologize for my lateness."

Locke smiled oddly and clapped his hands together in such a way that even Boone got chills.

"All right. The project is a special one, lasting the entire school year. Each of you will be paired up with another student from one of my science classes and you will have to do the work on your own time. You may use anything you can find-the internet, books, magazines, personal accounts, anything-as long as it's relevant to your topic. The entire thing will be presented at the end of the year by each pair at a day long session in the auditorium. Let's see, have I forgotten anythi...Oh, yes. Tomorrow I'll give you your partners and your topic that you'll research."

"He's _got_ to be joking." Kate said, staring at Locke in disbelief.

The bell rang, signalling the end of the school day.

Ana tapped her pencil on the desk she sat at, occasionally shooting death glares at Jack across the room, which were reciprocated until Jack laid his forehead on his arms and ignored her. Ana looked around the room before, finding nothing to keep her entertained, she propped her legs up on the desk and leaned her chair back, closing her eyes against the bright light.

"That's an awfully invitin' position you're in, muchacha." someone drawled and Ana opened one eye to look up at the new kid.

"Great." she groaned, closing her eye again and leaning back even farther in her chair. There was no sound, so she could tell he hadn't moved and when she opened her eyes this time, he was still staring at her.

"Can I help you?" she snapped, glaring up at the guy who was annoying her. "Or will you go away by yourself?"

With that the guy grinned and sat in the desk next to her, eyes never leaving her form.

"Freaks and gay guys." Ana muttered, leaning back in her chair again and throwing her arm over her eyes. "That's all I ever get."

"Sweetcheeks-"

"My name is AnaLucia." Ana snapped from under her arm.

"_AnaLucia_." he drawled, putting emphasis on the 'ee-ya' at the end. "Sweetcheeks, I ain't gay and I ain't a freak-"

"I beg to differ." Ana said, pulling her arm away from her eyes and looking at the guy.

"Since when is looking at a beautiful lady such as yourself a crime?" the guy asked, giving her a small smile that showed her his dimples.

"When stalking became illegal in all fifty states, cowboy." Ana replied, giving him her own twisted version of a saccharin smile.

"That's true..." the guy said, the grin growing wider, "...but I'm from Canada."

Ana's chair legs decided to slide out from under her at that moment.

_Somewhere, a cock crowed._

_James cracked open one eye to look around, took in his surroundings. _

_**BANG!**_

_James rolled out of the bed as the door slammed open and scurried beneath it._

_"Rise'n'shin-Jim? Jim?" Gunn walked into the room and pulled the covers up to look under the bed, where James was laying on his back breathing hard. "Whatcha doin' under there, Jim? You spend the night under there, boy?"_

_"You startled me, that's all." James said, crawling out from under the bed as Gunn watched. _

_"Oh..." Gunn said, dragging out the syllable. Then, his whole demeanor changed and he clapped his hands together excitedly. "Let's go! Time to work."_

_James stared after the man in disbelief._

_-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

_The barn was on fire and it was all his fault._

_Gunn yanked him away from where he watched, entranced by the blaze. _

_"What the hell happened to my barn?!"_

_James just shrugged and watched as Gunn's face grew even angrier._

_"You-you-you little bastard! You did this on purpose didn't you?" Gunn yelled over the crackle of the fire, shooting his fist out to smack James hard across the face._

_James hit the ground with a grunt and a loud crack as pain shot up his right arm. Damn farmer had made him snap his wrist._

_"I didn't do nothin'!" James hissed angrily, cradling his arm and yelling in pain as Gunn dragged him upright again._

_"Ever since you got here, you ain't been nothin' but trouble for me and my farm, you little snit." Gunn growled, shoving James towards his rusted truck. "Get in the damn truck. I'm takin' you back where you came from."_

_Gunn shoved him against the truck before running around and getting in the passenger side. James hadn't even closed the door when Gunn took off and he struggled to stay in the truck._

_"Maybe I should just push you outta the damn truck."_

_And before James could protest, before he could think, before he could do /IanythingI, Gunn had wrapped his fist arounds James' overalls and shoved him from the truck._

_James hit the ground hard, rolled a few times and then lay still, staring up at the bright red sky. _

_Fading in and out of consciousness, James heard tires squeal, a crash and then something exploded._

_Something smacked his head, hard, and he knew nothing but black._


	8. The Tangled Web, Part 2

"Now don't embarass me in front of these people." Claire said quickly to her friend, jamming her finger onto the doorbell.

A smile broke Claire's face as the door opened to reveal Hurley, who smiled at her.

"Hurley!" she exclaimed, hugging him tightly. Hurley had always reminded Claire of an oversized teddy bear so she always felt the need to hug him as tightly as she could.

"What's up Claire?" he asked, his eyes falling upon the mousey boy standing behind them awkwardly. "Who's your friend?"

"Hurley, this is Thomas." Claire said as Hurley ushered the pair inside the house and down the hall towards a loud ruckus. "He's a bloke I grew up with in Oz and he's gonna live with his aunt Clara in the next town for a year, thought he'd ring me up. I hope you don't mind my bringing him."

"Not at all." Hurley said, glancing back at Thomas, who had decided he wanted to trail behind them. "Mi casa es su casa, right?"

"Right." Claire said, laughing.

Thomas trailed behind the pair as they entered the rec room, where an almost violent game of Outburst was going on between Cindy, Michael, Kate, Sun, Charlie, Libby, Boone and Sayid. AnaLucia sat on the couch, watching in amusement but not really partaking of the fun.

"OY! Dudes and dudettes, can I have your attention please?" Hurley yelled, raising his arms like a boxing announcer. The group stopped what they were doing and looked towards him, Claire and Thomas.

"Guys, this is Thomas. He's Claire's friend so treat him right, dudes." Hurley said, shrugging and settling down next to Libby to join the game of Outburst.

"Hey." the group said as one, waving or nodding their heads at Thomas before turning back to Outburst. All except Charlie-Charlie kept staring at Thomas with an intrigued look. Leaving the game quietly, he moved to sit beside Thomas then proceeded to have a short conversation with the lad.

"Are you Claire's boyfriend?"

"Your mother tells me you had some fun at school today, Jack."

Jack's head shot up and he looked towards the doorway, his face falling as he saw his father standing there loosening his tie. Jack unconsciously rubbed at his cheek where Ana had hit him and he saw his father's eyes take it in.

"Just a little." Jack monotoned, ripping his hand away from his face so fast he whacked it on the desk and had to bite his lip to keep from swearing. Tearing his eyes away from his father, Jack turned back to his homework, a sense of unease filling him as his father walked around behind him.

"What's this?"

"Ho-homework." Jack said, unable to keep himself from stuttering.

"What's the problem, Jack?"

"N-Nothing, dad. Nothing's wrong."

Jack's dad pulled his son's computer chair away from the desk, spinning it to face him where he stood.

"Who did you beat up this time, Jack?"

"AnaLu-Lucia." Jack said, trying to keep as far away from his father as he could while still remaining upright in the chair.

"The Spanish girl?" Christian asked, cocking his head. "What did I tell you about hitting wom-"

"It wasn't my fault dad! She hit me fir-"

Jack saw a flash of white and then he was on the floor instead of in his computer chair. The chair lay toppled next to him as his father towered over him.

"Don't interrupt me when I'm speaking to you, Jack. Do you understand me?"

Jack licked his lips and tasted blood, felt a twinge of pain as he did so.

"Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir."

Ana watched the game of Outburst without actually watching it until something obscured her vision and she looked up at the worried face of her brother.

"Hi." he said.

"Hey." she replied. "What happened to the game?" Sayid gave her a strange look.

"Ana, the game ended ten minutes ago."

Ana furrowed her brow, blinking wildly and looking around her brother at where she'd been watching the game moments before. The group was watching a movie instead of playing the game.

"Oh." she said.

"Can I talk to you outside?" Sayid asked, nodding his head toward the back door.

"Mmmhmmm." she said, nodding her head but not actually moving to get up.

Needless to say, she was surprised when her brother grabbed her by the arm roughly and yanked her up, dragging her out onto the back porch.

"What's gotten into you, Ana?" Sayid hissed, keeping his grip on her arm despite her struggles.

"Nothing. Let me _go_, Sayid." she snapped, digging her nails into his hand in an effort to get it off her arm.

"It's not 'nothing', Ana. You-you've been walking around in a daze ever since this afternoon and whenever anyone tries to talk to you, you avoid them." Sayid stated and Ana stopped moving to glare at him. "You're scaring me, Ana. It's like you're...retreating into yourself. Giving up."

Ana just turned her head and hoped Sayid would let her go. Instead, her yanked her arm, making her head flip back toward him and looked into her eyes.

"Ana, is this about what Jack said?"

"He had_ no_ right to talk about Shannon like that! She's ten times a better person than he is-" Ana stopped short and Sayid's eyes softened. Releasing her arm, he gently tucked her hair behind her ear as she stood frozen.

"Would you like to talk about it?" he asked, stroking her hair.

"I met a guy today."

Sayid's muscles tensed up almost immediately, protective brother mode flicking on.

"A guy."

"Yeah." Ana said, moving to sit on the porch steps and wrapping her arms around herself as if she were cold, despite the warm September night.

"What's his name?" Sayid asked, settling himself beside her on the stairs and she chuckled at his question.

"I dunno. He's in my science class. I think it's, like, Jim or Jason or something." Ana said, shrugging. "He's in detention with me and Jack, too."

"Jack and I." Sayid said before he could stop himself and Ana stared at him in disbelief.

"I'm pouring my heart out to you and you wanna give me grammar lessons?"

Sayid could've smacked himself.

"Sorry. I just...sorry. Carry on."

"He's an annoying prick." Ana said, sighing and dropping her head into her hands.

"So, what's the problem then?"

"He's almost the exact equivalent of Jack and yet somehow Jack still manages to piss me off more than the cowboy." Ana said, turning her head to look at her brother. "Am I a bad person, Sayid?"

"What?" he asked, horribly confused at Ana's question.

"Am I a bad person?" she asked again.

"Ana...why would you even ask that? You could never be a bad person-"

"Then why does everyone I love keep leaving me?"

Sawyer sat on the porch, smoking a cigarette again and thinking. Again. But this time, he thought about a girl named AnaLucia.

AnaLucia was a bitch.

AnaLucia was viscious.

AnaLucia was annoying as hell.

So why did he find himself attracted to her?

"Sonofabitch." he said, tossing his cigarette to the ground and stomping it out more violently than he probably had to. He didn't Iwant/I to think about her. Right now, he wished he'd never even Imet/I the muchacha.

So Sawyer turned his thoughts to other things.

_"Mr. and Mrs. Nadler, I need to tell you-"_

_"Rose and Bernard, honey." said the African American woman across the desk from Ms. Colbert. Her husband nodded in agreement and Ms. Colbert got confused for a moment._

_"Beg pardon?"_

_"Call us Rose and Bernard, if you don't mind." Rose said, her cheeks flushing a rosy pink as she smiled that made her skin turn almost a chocolate-cherry color._

_"All right. Rose and Bernard, I need to tell you something about the child you're planning on adopting." the head said and she blinked in surprise when the couple sat attentively, waiting for her to speak. "Um...the child...Charlie. He has two siblings here and somehow, they've never been seperated for more than a month when one of them is taken. The three have come up with-with their own Iescape plan/I when it comes to them being seperated. I just thought I should probably warn you if you're planning on adopting the one."_

_"Oh." Rose said softly, her face falling. Bernard turned to comfort her when she continued. "I guess we'll just have to adopt all three of them then."_

_"What?" Ms. Colbert asked._

_"What?" Bernard asked and Rose turned to him._

_"It won't be that hard, Bernard. They're just children." Rose said positively._

_"But-but, all three of them?" he asked, trying to decide whether he was terrified of his wife's choice or relieved that she'd taken the choice from him._

_"**Yes**, all three of them. They're family, Bernard." Rose said sternly and Bernard's skin went a slight tinge of pink. "You know the weight of family with me."_

_"Unfortunately, yes I do." Bernard said, making her smile before he turned back to Ms. Colbert. "We'll adopt the three of them. Family shouldn't be seperated."_

_"Are you sure you-"_

_"Positive." Rose said and Ms. Colbert sighed._

_"All right. I warned you, though-you can't say I didn't warn you." Ms. Colbert said, standing and going to fetch the children. The first she came upon was Libby. "Libby, honey, where're your brothers?"_

_"Over by the house."_

_Ms. Colbert looked over to the large plastic playhouse across the room and saw that the pair were playing in and around the tiny house. Charlie was leaning out the window and James was impersonating some sort of large, gallumphing monster (or so she assumed from his movements)._

_"Libby, if you could go into my office and say hello to the people in there, I'll be in in one minute."_

_Libby just nodded, closed her notebook and walked away as Ms. Colbert made her way towards James and Charlie._

_"-ie Foe Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman-" James stopped his rhyme short as he saw Ms. Colbert approach. "Charlie, come out. It's time to go."_

_Charlie scrambled heels over head out through the window of the playhouse, barely landing on his feet and making Ms. Colbert half-lunge to try and catch him. But Charlie just grinned up at her when she stared down at him sternly, hands on her hips._

_"Little brother's got the balance of a cat." James said, wrapping an arm around Charlie's shoulders and ruffling his hair with the other hand._

_"You two get to come with me." Ms. Colbert said, turning and walking back towards her office. Opening the door, she allowed the two boys to enter first before she did so herself and, when she did, she was shocked at the scene in front of her. Libby was sitting on Bernard's lap watching in amazement as he kept pulling money from behind her ears. Charlie was being hugged to death (and vice versa) by Rose and James was actually Ismiling/I. For once. Charlie heard the door creak shut and looked up at Ms. Colbert with bright eyes._

_"Can we keep them, Ms. Colbert?" he asked seriously. "Please?"_

_"Yes, please, Ms. Colbert." Libby said from Bernard's lap._

_"I-I-" Ms. Colbert stuttered until Rose Iand/I Bernard gave her vigorous nods. "I guess you can. You can take them home with you."_

_"Let's get everything taken care of then." Bernard said, lifting Libby off his lap and trading with Rose so that now he had Charlie._

_"We get to go home?" Charlie asked the new person and, as Ms. Colbert sat behind her desk and began to find the necessary papers, Bernard looked down at Charlie then up at James before looking over at Libby and Rose (who had begun to braid Libby's long blond hair by this time), who caught his eye._

_"We get to go home." Rose said firmly and Charlie laughed loudly while Libby giggled. James' small smile grew the littlest bit bigger and Bernard couldn't kelp but let out a small 'Woohoo!' in joy_.

Sawyer flicked his new cigarette to the ground and let it burn on the cement before stubbing it out with his toe. His mama had never really liked it when he smoked anyway, told him he should quit.

He couldn't help but smile as he looked up at the stars a final time. Then, he stood up, stretched his weary muscles and headed back into the house he and his siblings called home.

A/N: All righty then! So, yeah. Preview for the next chapter right here!

Lady in the Water-A Sun-Centric Chapter  
Claire and Sun have a discussion about dreams, Ana and Sayid's mom finds a boyfriend, and Jin manages to make Sun smile.


	9. Lady in the Water, Part 1

Title: Of Pride and Prejudice  
Rating: R (just in case)  
Pairing: Sawyer/Ana WIP  
Summary: None of them could remember when their rivalry had truly started.  
Warnings: Drug use (probably gonna be a constant cause of Sawyer and his cigarettes), mild swearing (same thing-Sawyer),  
Disclaimer: I own squat. If I owned Lost, Ana would be alive and she and Sawyer would be happily married with three small children.  
A/N: Any flashbacks in this chapter will be in Korean unless I tell you otherwise, kay? Cool. Also, I swear to god that the whole Shannon being a royal bitch to everyone will end soon, cause, well, I'm getting sick of it. I'm getting sick of writing Shannon as this prissy, defenseless, damsel in distress who cries more than Jack ever did. Cause she can be sooooo kickass.

Also, this one is slightly shorter than Sawyer's episode because I had this great idea for Sun's flashbacks but then it expanded into something else entirely, which led to shorter flashbacks.

**Blaze**-Ana just had a moment of klutzyness I timed to match with his words.

Thanks so much to everyone who **reviewed**! And to anyone who actually read it!

Lady in the Water: A Sun Centric Chapter

_Sun was shaken awake during the night and she looked sleepily up at her mother's smiling but worried face. _

"Come along, sunshine." her mother said, pulling the covers back and making Sun curl up as the cold air hit her nightgown clad form.

"Mama, that's cold!" she said loudly and her mother placed a hand over her mouth quickly as she hushed Sun. Sun's mother sat on the bed with Sun in the dark, waiting for something, anything. After what seemed like an eternity to Sun, her mother pulled her hand away from Sun's mouth and said "You need to be quiet tonight." in such a tone that Sun was afraid that she'd done something horribly wrong. It was a full five minutes before Sun got the courage to speak again, and this time she whispered.

"Mama, what's the matter?" she asked, confused as her mother continued to pull clothes over her head. "What are you doing?"

"We're going on a trip tonight, Sun." her mother said, smiling down at Sun as she adjust the jacket she'd just pulled over Sun's shoulders. "Isn't that exciting, sunshine? Come along. We have to go now."

"Where are we going?" Sun asked excitedly as her mother finished dressing her and grabbed her hand to lead her along.

"America. Just you and me, sunshine." she replied, looking down the dark hallway outside of Sun's room twice in each direction before pulling Sun out into it.

Something nagged at Sun as she followed her mother down the dark hallway and she tugged on her mother's hand.

"Is this about papa? Is papa a bad man?" she asked and her mother stopped, turned and crouched down next to her daughter.

"You are much smarter than we give you credit for, love." her mother replied, stroking her face gently. Sun closed her eyes in enjoyment at the feeling of her mother's fingers on her face, caught up in the moment.

A door slamming somewhere in the house shattered the moment as Sun's mother straightened and pushed Sun behind her.

But no one came and Sun's mother sighed in relief.

"We're going to go ride a boat, sunshine, won't that be fun?" Sun's mother asked as she began to move toward the back of the house as Sun skipped along beside her.

"Will we catch fish, mama? Like the fishermen?" Sun whispered and her mother nodded vigorously, leaning down to pick Sun up and balance her on her hip as she walked.

"We'll catch lots of fish. Purple ones and blue ones and red ones and-"

"Rainbow ones!" Sun said loudly again, gasping and clasping a hand over her own mouth. Her mother froze again and listened.

The door slammed again moments later and Sun's mother put her down.

"I need to you to run with me now, all right, sunshine?" Sun's mother asked and Sun nodded, wide eyed.

Sun and her mother took off as fast as they could, Sun's mother leading her into the darkness.

Sun's eyes shot open and she saw the water again.

No...not the water.

The sea blue walls of her bedroom.

Unexplainable terror ate at Sun as she sat up in her bed and looked around the room, illuminated with the eerie gray light of dawn. Everything looked out of place in her room and she could swear that she could hear whispers coming from the walls.

Sun shivered, wrapping her arms around her upper body at the chill only her body felt. The rest of the room was a comfortable temperature and that fact made her shiver again.

She leaned over and flicked on the bedside lamp on her night stand, picked up the book laying on the table and opened it to the last page she'd been reading.

She knew she wouldn't be able to sleep anymore today.

"Sun."

Sun looked over her shoulder to discover Shannon waiting behind her, switching her weight from leg to leg nervously.

"Can I talk to you for a second?" Shannon asked, eyes flicking about the hallway, taking in any number of things there at the moment.

"Give me one moment, please." Sun said, turning back to her locker and setting her book inside, grabbing a notebook and closing her locker. "All right."

"Who do you think you are, talking to me like you did, Sun?" Shannon spat, making Sun blink in surprise at the sudden change in demeanor.

"I think I am a friend." Sun said and Shannon sputtered for a moment before continuing her tirade.

"You have _no_ right to be so condescending-"

"And _you_ have no right to be so selfish!" Sun said angrily, unbelieving that she could be so stupid. "You are _hurting_ people who love you, Shannon! You push us away and you treat us with disdain and you show no respect for us and we still love you."

"I'm not sure why." Shannon muttered, rolling her eyes.

"_How_ can you be so stupid?" Sun said, raising her voice but not exactly yelling. It was beneath her to yell at someone over something. "The Shannon that I used to know was much smarter than this one and, I have to say, I liked that one much more than this one. You are a stupid, selfish young woman lately, Shannon, and it is most unbecoming."

Shannon looked at Sun in fear that she might jump on the blond at any moment and begin pummeling her.

"We still love you because we are still your friends, Shannon." Sun said so calmly that Shannon got chills. "We still love you because that is what friends do."

And with that, Sun walked away from the stunned blond.

Jack winced as he licked his lips, the cut on his lower lip stinging badly and he tasted a little blood.

Scrunching his eyes closed, Jack leaned down to lay his head on his arms but decided against it when another stab of pain shot up his left arm. He pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and traced the hand shaped bruise on his forearm like he was playing connect the dots.

"A wise man would say something of that."

Jack yanked his sleeve back down and turned to see Eko staring at him.

No...not staring.

More like 'looking inquisitively at'.

"About what?" Jack asked, like he didn't know what Eko was talking about. But he rubbed at his arm through his shirt and tasted blood again on his tongue.

It was metallic, bitter and it made his insides oh so warm.

"I would not lose respect for you if you admitted this defeat, Jack." Eko said and Jack locked eyes with him as he continued. "It is not wrong and it is not a shameful thing."

"Nothing's wrong to begin with, Eko." Jack snapped, pushing his chair back roughly so that it scraped the floor and stalking from the room.

Eko watched him go knowing that Jack would come to grips in his own time and that he, Eko, would not be one to push him.

Sawyer was surprised to find Shannon waiting at their "spot" when he arrived that day. _When had he started thinking of she and he as them?_ Shaking his head, he made a clucking noise at her back.

"You're a mite early, Sticks." he snarked playfully, settling himself down beside her. She looked at him with a look that suggested she might have been completely out of it if she hadn't responded to his jab.

"What?" she asked quietly, whisper soft so he had to strain his ears to hear her.

"What's the matter, sweetheart?" he asked, playfulness changing to concern for his friend-_when had they become friends?_-as he took in her bedraggled appearance. "Jesus, Shan, you look terrible."

"Thanks so much for the wonderful compliment." Shannon said angrily before it turned into silent sobs that wracked her form and made Sawyer's heart ache for a reason he couldn't understand. "She said that I was being selfish."

"Who, if I may ask?" Sawyer asked, confused at the sudden change in topic.

"Sun. And you know what?" she asked, pushing her limp hair back from her face and turning her head to look at him. "She's right. She's right about me. I am selfish. I don't deserve friends. I talked to her this morning and she yelled at me and she had every right."

"This morn-Shannon, how long have you been out here?" he asked, his brow furrowing as he hoped she wouldn't say that she'd been out here-

"All morning." she muttered, looking back down at her hands in shame.

-all morning.

"You shouldn'ta sat out here all by yourself." he said, moving a hand to tuck her sunshine hair behind her ear and brushing a thumb down her jaw lightly.

He was conscious of the look in her eyes and he was conscious of how close they were and he was conscious of how naive she was, even if she didn't realize it herself.

He was conscious that this was so very wrong.

And he bit into the forbidden fruit anyway.

_Sun gasped for breath as her mother dragged her along by her wrist. She knew she should be afraid and yet she found joy in the situation. _

She smelled salt and fish and rotting wood and another smell she couldn't quite identify, but it was familiar to her regardless of whether or not she could give it a name. She didn't know the word but she knew where she was and she felt a tingle of anticipation shiver up her spine.

She and her mother were at the fisher's docks. She could hear the boats as they bumped together gently in the water and suddenly she knew what the unidentifiable smell was. It was water and everything that was wet and everything that was warm.

"Mama, where is the boat?" Sun asked between breaths as her mother yanked her to an abrupt halt on the dock.

"We have to wait for a man to show us the way to the boat before we can get on it, sunshine. He'll show us the way." her mother reassured her and Sun couldn't help but grasp her mother's hand tighter as the darkness seemed to close in around her.

"Mama, I'm afraid." Sun whispered and her mother crouched down next to her, smoothing her long hair away from her face, smiling half-heartedly.

"There is no need to be afraid now, my sunshine." she whispered, looking into Sun's eyes and seeing no fear there at all, despite what the little girl had said. "You are not afraid. My Sun is not afraid of anything-I can see it in your eyes, little girl."

"Hea?"

Sun's mother's head whipped around as a figure emerged from the darkness.

Sun became afraid.

Sun sat on the top steps of the cement bleachers in the gym alone, legs askew and shoulders hunched.

_Where did everything go so wrong?_ she thought, picking a stray thread on her pants, yanking on it until it snapped and ended. _Can it ever be fixed? Will we ever be like we were before?_

Sun felt tears prick at her eyes, so she put her eyes against the heels of her hands and tried not to cry.

Something rustled gently and she looked up, her eyes falling on the object floating before her.

It was an orchid. A white orchid was floating on it's own before her eyes.

Was she hallucinating?

No, wait.

The flower had a hand attached.

"Flowers have hands?" she asked herself and she heard a small chuckle, making her turn to find Jin beside her. He was the one holding the flower.

"Only if they are being held by someone." he said, holding the flower out to her silently with a warm smile.

"Jin, I-" she said, touched at the token as she took it and played her fingers over the snow white petals gently. "It's beautiful."

"The two of you belong then." Jin said and Sun couldn't help but smile, a tear leaking down her cheek. Whether it was from happiness or sadness she couldn't tell and she forgot her reasoning completely as Jin brushed the tear from her cheek gently.

"What's wrong, Sun? Why are you crying?" he asked and she sniffed once, wiping at her cheek again before smiling at him and shaking her head.

"Nothing." she said. "The flower is just so beautiful. Thank you for it."

Ana had been searching for Shannon for the past hour and had come across two dead ends, one couple showing a little too much PDA for her to be comfortable with and the new science teacher.

The science teacher was the one who made her see the PDA, as she ducked into the nearest doorway to avoid him until he passed.

She had to wait a bit so she turned around and there were tongues and clothes and...just _waaaay_ too much of anything that she ever wanted to see from another couple. She was sure she'd be scarred for life as she almost tore the door off it's hinges to escape the room.

Anyway, she'd finally gotten a pretty good lead that Shannon was at the back of the school hanging out with the cowboy, so that's where she was headed at the moment.

Turning a corner, Ana spotted the door that led to the back stairs and walked swiftly toward it.

Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw when she slammed through the doors.

"Shannon, what the hell are you doing?!"

Shannon pulled away from Sawyer and looked at Ana in shock before everything registered and she looked between Sawyer and Ana in horror.

"Did we..." she asked him and he nodded his head slowly, shame apparent on his face.

"Did I..." she asked and he nodded again.

"Oh god..." she muttered, burying her head in her hands. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I kissed you, Sawyer. I didn't mean to."

Shannon stood, pushed past Ana and disappeared back into the school.

"God DAMN it!" Ana yelled after Shannon before turning on Sawyer. "What the _hell_ is your problem? You can't leave me alone so you gotta go after my friends?"

"Hold on just one damn minute! She kissed me, so don't you _dare_ go blamin' this on me, muchacha." Sawyer replied angrily, straightening up to full height in the hopes that he could intimidate her. "She's been comin' here everyday for the past three weeks and all we done is talk."

Ana slapped Sawyer so hard he was sure his dead mama felt it and he hissed as his own hand flew to his face.

"What the hell was that for?!" he snapped.

"Keep away from my friends." she hissed and his eyes narrowed.

"Or what? You'll slap me again?" he taunted and her eyes flared.

This time, he caught her wrist as it flew towards his face and yanked her towards him.

"Everything in this world is not about you, AnaLucia." he whispered in her ear, drawing out the last part of her name and making shivers shoot up and down her spine. "There _are_ other people living on this planet."

He slid his hand to her lower back and yanked her hard against him and she let out an unladylike grunt.

"It's time you learned that." he whispered, running his hand up her back and smirking when he felt her shiver.

Then, he was on the ground at the foot of the steps as she towered over him at the top.

"Stay away from my friends, Sawyer." she growled, glaring down at him. "It's time you learned that."

_L'ours polaire s'assied sur la mer._

Sayid furrowed his brow and stared down at his paper, biting his lip.

That didn't look right.

_The polar bear sits on the beach._

'_Why is the polar bear on the beach in the first place? Polar bears aren't indigenous to places with beaches._' Sayid thought, brow furrowing deeper as he managed to confuse himself.

"It's 'la plage', not 'la mer'."

Sayid blinked out of his self-induced confusion and turned his head to look at Shannon, who was looking at his worksheet from across the aisle.

"Pardon?" he asked and she rolled her eyes in annoyance.

" 'La mer' is ' the sea'. The phrase you're looking for is 'la plage', or ' the beach'. " she explained, pointing to his chicken scratch.

"But why is the polar bear on the beach anyway?" he asked and she gave him a look that clearly asked if he'd gone mad.

"Um..." she said uncomfortably, biting her lip as she tried to think of an answer to his odd question. "Maybe it was beached? Y'know-like the whales?"

Sayid smiled in amusement at Shannon and nodded.

"Thank you for your help, Shannon. I appreciate it." he said and she smiled at him, making his stomach clench with something he couldn't describe. He turned back to his work and struggled onto the next sentence.

_What had made him ever think that he could possibly understand this language?_

He'd grown up between Arabic, Spanish, and English and all this was doing was confusing him.

Shannon cleared her throat loudly next to him and he looked at her again, raising his eyebrows in question.

"If you're having, y'know, like, trouble with...stuff...I could, like...um...I could, y'know, help you with it. The French. The language, I mean, not the villagers with the torches and the pitchforks." she said, bouncing around the topic as she reached a hand around to scratch the back of her head uncomfortably. "Not saying that you're, like, _dumb_ or anything, I just..."

Shannon sighed and ran a hand through her hair and for some reason all Sayid could think was that he wanted to be that hand, running itself through her hair.

"Y'know what? Never mind, forget I mentioned it." she muttered, turning back to her own work.

"I would be honored to have you tutor me, Shannon." he said and she looked at him again with a look in her eyes that he couldn't describe.

"You-really?" she asked, tucking some hair behind her ear then her pencil.

"If you don't mind." he said earnestly and she couldn't help but smile. Blinking a few times she tugged at her pencil, making a few strands come loose from behind her ear.

"I-sure. We can talk after class?" she asked.

"You're the one doing the tutoring." he said and she couldn't help but let out a small noise of amusement that she had to stifle quickly as the teacher looked up.

"That sounded dirty, Sayid." Shannon whispered as they both turned back to their work.


	10. Lady in the Water, Part 2

"Claire?"

Claire looked up to find Sun looking down at her as she did some homework waiting for Jack to get out of detention. Dear god, was it boring the hell out of her.

"Hey!" Claire said, thankful for the distraction as she almost threw her books onto the ground beside her and waited for Sun to sit down. "What can I do you for?"

"I've been having some dreams lately...a-about what happened before I came to America and I wanted to speak of them with you." Sun said, stuttering mid-sentence as she played with a white object in her hands that Claire couldn't quite see. "I always have the same feeling when I wake-I'm scared and I can't explain it."

"Does the dream-does it mirror anything that's been happening lately at all? What kind of dream is it?" Claire asked, intrigued by Sun's predicament.

"I'm not being chased, but I'm always running away from my...from something." Sun said, barely catching herself.

"Well, chasing dreams usually mean stress from your waking life is leaking into your subconscious and, because you're afraid to confront it, or because you can, you turn tail and rocket off." Claire explained, getting into a flow as she babbled on about dreams to Sun. "I'd say that there's something in your life you're afraid to confront and until you do, the dream will repeat over and over."

"Claire?"

Claire and Sun turned to find Jack looking around the grounds for her.

"Sun, I've got to go." Claire said, hurriedly stuffing her things into her messenger bag and pulling it over her head before turning back to Sun."Jack's dad said he'd drive me home today, but I hope I've been of some help to you. You know my number if you still need to talk, feel free to call me any time, day or night, all right?"

"Thank you." Sun said and Claire nodded before calling Jack's name and walking off, leaving Sun alone with her thoughts.

_Sun cowered behind her mother as the person approached and Sun worried that they had been caught. The urgency in her mother had not escaped her senses and she began to understand that this was not something to be taken lightly._

"Hea, is that you?" the dark figure asked, moving into the moonlight. A kind-looking man wearing a hat squinted through the darkness at them and Sun deemed that this man could be trusted so she relaxed against her mother's leg.

"Gi?" Hea asked, relaxing visibly in the moonlight. "Thank goodness."

"Are you well? Did everything work out?" the fisherman, Gi, asked Sun's mother as they began to walk along the docks.

"Nothing went wrong." Hea said in reply and Gi knew that he had to hurry them along.

"My son and I will take you up the coast where we will meet a boat on the way to America. A friend of mine will get you on board and take care of you both from there." Gi explained, approaching one of the boats and Sun saw a boy about her age toying with one of the ropes aboard the boat.

"Welcome to my humble boat." Gi said, bowing low as he ushered them onto the boat and Sun couldn't help but giggle.

"Such a pretty little one." Gi said, crouching down and looking into Sun's eyes. "What is your name , pretty one?"

"Sun." she replied and he reached around behind her ear, pulling back and handing her a sweet of some kind. She clapped her hands over her ears in surprise, wondering if the sweet had truly come from behind her ear.

"Such a pretty name for a pretty young lady." Gi said, placing the sweet in her hand before turning away and pushing the boat away from the dock.

Sun watched the moonlit docks grow smaller and smaller until she couldn't see them anymore, no matter how hard she squinted.

"So, your dad's picking us up?"

Jack blinked from his trance and looked over at Claire, sitting beside him on the steps.

"What?"

"Your dad _is_ picking us up, right?" she asked again, a worried look crossing her face.

"Duh...yeah. Yeah, today." he replied and Claire looked at him inquisitively.

"Are you okay? You seem kinda distant, y'know?" she asked and he shook his head.

"Distant, how?" he asked and she sighed as she tried to think of how to describe it.

"I don't know...'distant' distant. Far off. Aloof. Removed."

"Spaced out?"

"That, too." Claire said, jabbing her finger at Jack's chest which...well, it hurt, but mostly it made him laugh. "What are you laughing at, mister?"

"You called me aloof." Jack said, still chuckling as he rubbed at the spot where Claire's finger had jabbed him. "And then you poked me in the chest."

"Oh, c'mon, it couldn't've hurt that bloody much!" Claire exclaimed, throwing her hands up in something that resembled defeat before pointing her finger at him again and narrowing her eyes. "You're trying to deter me. With-with laughter and amusement and making me think that I actually hurt you more than I did and-and it won't work, Jack Shephard, because...because...what was the question?"

"Distance." Jack replied and Claire picked up right where she'd left off.

"Right, you're too bloody distant, mister! So, you get your arse back from wherever it has decided to go without me and you sit it _right there_ on that step!" By the time Claire finished her rant, her face had turned pink and Jack wasn't sure if he should be more worried for her or more worried for himself.

The look in her eyes made him worry about himself as the pink faded delicately from her face and she dropped herself to the step beside him.

"Oh, hey, look." Claire said, changing demeanor so quickly Jack's eyes almost bugged out of their sockets and rolled under the wheels of his dad's approaching Bentley. "Your dad's here."

The car barely pulled to a stop as Claire tugged open the back door of the car and disappeared inside, Jack following warily.

"Afternoon, Claire." Christian said, nodding at her in the rearview mirror.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Shephard." Claire said, dumping her backpack on the floor of the back seat as she and Jack buckled themselves in securely.

"Come now, Claire. I've asked you to call me Christian, dear." he said, smiling into the rearview mirror as he pulled away from the curb and took to the road.

"All right, Mr. Shep...Christian." she said, catching herself mid-phrase.

"So, how were your days today?" he asked, turning a corner smoothly as he waited for an answer.

"Besides having to wait for Jack to finish detention, everything went surprisingly well."

"Yes, well, I'm sorry you had to pay for Jack's mistake Claire." Christian said, his eyes turning on Jack in the rearview mirror. Jack shifted uncomfortably as his father's eyes bore holes into his head but Claire didn't seem to notice. He chewed at his bottom lip as he stared down at his feet instead of the back of the headrest where he could see his father's eyes watching him.

"Oh, no, it wasn't a problem. I did some homework, so more time for me at home." Claire said, noticing how Christian's eyes grew dark and turned to Jack in the mirror and how he shifted uncomfortably, chewing on his bottom lip. The red was a shock for her as it dripped slowly down his chin.

"Oh my god...Jack, you're bleeding." Claire said, pulling out a tissue as Jack wiped at his lip with the back of his hand.

"Let me see it." Claire commanded, grabbing Jack's chin and making him face her as she dabbed at it.

"Did you get this from Ana?" she asked and he shook his head, making her brow furrow. "Well, where..." Claire trailed off as Jack's eyes flicked to the front of the car for a moment before flicking back to her worried face.

"I walked into the screen door at my house."

"But, you don't have a-"

"I walked into the door at my house." Jack said, a little more forcefully and Claire snapped her mouth shut as he ripped the tissue from her hand and turned away.

Ana sprinted home as the darkness set in, backpack bouncing painfully against one spot where a book corner kept slapping itself against her lower back.

'sh-t.' she thought as her legs burned. 'Mom's gonna friggin _kill_ me!'

Her detention had run longer than was expected (she still wasn't sure how that had happened) and then she'd decided to watch the sunset on a bench in the park she took a shortcut through. All in all, she was now running late and running home in the dark, hoping that her mother would already be asleep and she could just sneak in.

The car parked in front of her house was a surprise that made her stop short as she didn't recognize it.

She didn't recognize the blond man getting out of the car either and that made her nervous. The guy made her nervous. He looked seedy.

Slowly, Ana approached the house as the man walked up to the front door and pressed the doorbell.

"Who're you?" Ana said and the guy tensed, turning in surprise at the voice behind him. Seeing it was just a girl, he relaxed.

"Why?" he asked, an almost mockingly playful look in his eyes as he did so.

"I live here." she said, cocking and eyebrow and pointing to the house.

"Really? Are you AnaLucia?" he asked, truly curious and Ana began to back away from the guy, wondering why he knew her name. She shifted her book bag so she could swing it at him if he tried to attack her. He realized what she was doing and waved his hands wildly. "No! No, no-your mom and I met through a friend and we're going to see a movie tonight! That's all, I swear."

Ana looked at him critically until the front door opened and her mother stood there wearing a flowered dress.

"Hi, Jason." she said to him before turning on her daughter. "Where have you been?"

"Obtuve tenido arriba al colegio." Ana said and her mom looked at her in disbelief. So she changed the subject. "Usted nunca me dijo usted tuvo a un novio."

"Es ninguno de su negocio, la señorita." her mother said, pulling on a jacket and closing the closet door. "Now, I don't want to come back to find the house burned down, you understand me? I know you like to make..._things_ in the kitchen."

"It was only once, mom. And I was eight."

"It was twice and I already made you dinner anyway." her mom said before leaning down and kissing her on top of her head. "Buenas noches, mi vida."

"Night..." Ana said, but her mother was already walking away. "Jason" closed the door of the car after she got in and shot a look back at Ana, giving her a smile that creeped her out beyond belief and made her retreat into the safety of the house.

_She was drowning. She had fallen in the water at the boat passing and she was drowning for her mistake._

Sun's vision began to get hazy when she felt someone grab her around the waist and tug her upward through the haze of blue and purple and deepening black.

Sun spluttered as she broke the surface of the water and her mother cried out in relief that her daughter was alive.

"Are you all right?" asked the owner of the arm around her waist. Unable to speak, Sun just nodded and she felt him tug her along toward the boat. Someone lifted them both onto the boat and the arm laid her on the boat's deck and she looked up into the worried face of Gi's son.

"Thank you." Hea said, pulling him to her and hugging him with all she was worth before releasing him and turning to Sun, brushing her hair from her face. "You gave me a scare, sunshine. We should be more careful."

Sun's eyes followed Gi's son as he moved into the darkness behind her mother and vanished. She heard a soft splash and it occurred to her that he'd just saved her life.

Later, when she and her mother were safe and warm in a room on the boat, it occurred to her that she never learned the boy's name.

Claire Littleton sat snuggled under the green comforter of her bed, up against the wall as the table lamp shined in the dark room. She sat in her bed and she wrote in her journal about everything that had happened in her life so far and her reflections on it. She wrote about school and her friends and the last movie she'd seen in the theater.

She also wrote about dreams.

_I've been having the same dream, over and over again for the past few days and it troubles me. The outcome is always the same but the players change about, like my mind is trying to fit a puzzle together unsuccessfully. At times, the main players are Kate and Boone, at times myself and Jack, always changing, nothing remains but the final outcome._

Death.

It scares me that I'm having this dream but what scares me even more is the feeling of finality I get each time I wake.

I'm starting to fear sleeping because then, I'll dream and one more of my friends will die and I won't be able to help them.

Love,  
Claire

Translations:

Obtuve tenido arriba al colegio - I got held up at school  
Usted nunca me dijo usted tuvo a un novio - You didn't tell me you had a boyfriend  
Es ninguno de su negocio, la señorita - It's none of your business, young lady  
Buenas noches, mi vida -Good night, my life

Preview Time!

Interlude 2: Thomas  
The author takes the day off to visit her son in the hospital.

Alice in Wonderland-A Claire-Centric Chapter  
Claire has a terrifying dream that seems far too real, the kids get paired up by Locke and Jack finds comfort in Eko's presence.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico-An AnaLucia-Centric Chapter  
Ana meets her mother's boyfriend properly, Shannon tutors Sayid and Michael does something stupid.

Fly Away Home-A Cindy-Centric Chapter  
Cindy has a talk with Michael, Hurley grills Charlie about his sister and Ana and Sawyer research their topic.


	11. Thomas

Title: Of Pride and Prejudice

Rating: R (just in case)

Pairing: Sawyer/Ana WIP

Summary: None of them could remember when their rivalry had truly started.

Warnings: Drug use (probably gonna be a constant cause of Sawyer and his cigarettes), mild swearing (same thing-Sawyer),

Disclaimer: I own squat. If I owned Lost, Ana would be alive and she and Sawyer would be happily married with three small children.

A/N: I had to change the dates around to get this kid to be as old as I wanted him to be at this time so instead of it being four years since it happened, it is seven years.

Interlude 2: Thomas

17 December 2012

_Gripping the blue and green teddy bear like a vice, she composed herself enough to walk into the room. The ammonia-tinged air made her nauseous and the blinding white made her dizzy, regardless of how many times she came here._

_And still she came. She had to. She wanted to._

_She turned and closed the door gently behind her, in case he was sleeping, before walking further into the room. As she walked around the privacy curtain, a woman sitting in the chair beside the bed surprised her and she stopped._

_"Cindy?" she asked and Cindy's head turned._

_"Oh, hey." Cindy said, standing from the chair and rubbing her palms up and down on her jeans nervously. "How're you doing, man?"_

_"I'm okay. What are you doing here?" she asked, moving around Cindy to check on her son in the bed. "Is he doing okay? No change?"_

_"No, sorry." Cindy said before jerking a hand over her shoulder awkwardly. "Walt wanted to...well, he wanted to come see him. I didn't think you'd mind."_

_"I don't. Thanks for not leaving him alone." she said and Cindy half-smiled, switching her weight from leg to leg. She looked like she wanted to say something but at the same time, she didn't because it would be wrong._

_"Mom?"_

_Her head turned towards the bed at the same time Cindy's turned towards the door where Walt stood, clutching half of a Snickers bar and a Root Beer._

_She sighed. She had hoped that he might have been awake this time._

_"Walt, don't just stare at her. Say hi." Cindy muttered as Walt continued to stand in the doorway, silhouetted by the light in the hallway._

_"Hi." he said, finally choosing to move into the room, letting the door close with a soft click._

_"Hi, Walt." she said, toying with the teddy bear she was still holding._

_"We'll go, so you two can be..." Cindy trailed off, placing her hand on Walt's shoulder. "C'mon Walt, it's time to go."_

_She watched the duo go, feeling a pang in her heart, and then turned toward the bed where her son lay catatonic._

_"Hey, Thomas." she said, reaching out and grasping her son's hand firmly as she set herself down in the chair._

_"I brought you something." she continued, holding up the teddy bear._

_"See?" she asked, tucking the bear under his arm. It looked out of place against the white and pale blue of the blankets and the spotted scrub he wore so she removed the bear and placed it on the bedside table instead._

_"Daddy and I missed you at home today, sweetheart." she whispered, brushing his cheek with the back of her hand gently and trying not to cry. "It just isn't the same without you."_

_"It never is, is it?"_

_She turned at the question and saw her husband standing at the edge of the privacy curtain._

_"Not really, no." she said, her voice trembling as she looked back at their son. "I can't help but find myself wishing he'd get better...that he'd just wake up..."_

_She let out a sob and buried her face in her hands as the tears decided to make themselves know. She felt her husband move to crouch beside her and pull her to him so that she could cry on his shoulder instead of her hands._

_"So do I, baby." he murmured gently as he rocked her in the chair. "Every moment. We can only hope."_

Previews!

Alice in Wonderland-A Claire-Centric Chapter

Claire has a terrifying dream that seems far too real, the kids get paired up by Locke and Jack finds comfort in Eko's presence.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico-An AnaLucia-Centric Chapter

Ana meets her mother's boyfriend properly, Shannon tutors Sayid and Michael does something stupid.

Fly Away Home-A Cindy-Centric Chapter

Cindy has a talk with Michael, Hurley grills Charlie about his sister and Ana and Sawyer research their topic.

Anonymous-A Jack-Centric Chapter

An announcement goes up that makes the school buzz in anticipation, Halloween approaches and Claire goes on a date with Thomas.


	12. Alice in Wonderland, Part 1

itle: Of Pride and Prejudice  
Rating: R (just in case)  
Pairing: Sawyer/Ana WIP  
Summary: None of them could remember when their rivalry had truly started.  
Warnings: Swearing, character death, suicidal themes, violence  
Disclaimer: I own squat. If I owned Lost, Ana would be alive and she and Sawyer would be happily married with three small children.

Alice in Wonderland: A Claire Centric Chapter

_"I want to see my daughter!" _

Claire snapped awake as someone pounded angrily on a flat surface and she shivered beneath the covers of her bed.

"Go away!"

That was her mother's voice. Claire climbed from her bed and crept to the top of the stairs, resting her face between the bars of the railing there and watching her mother fight with someone she couldn't see.

But then, that wasn't exactly true.

She could see his shadow, stretched along the floor like a giant as it raised it's hands and shook in its anger. The light from the porch light stretched even farther, across the step beneath her feet and onto the wall.

Claire was three at the time and she let her bright blue eyes grow saucer sized as the door slammed shut and her mother ran into the foyer just below the stairs, breathing hard.

"Claire, did you hear that whole thing?"

Claire froze as her mother looked up and locked eyes with her through the railing. Claire nodded at her mother slowly, her face rubbing at the bars.

"Claire, come down here, please."

Claire bumped her way down the stairs, one at a time, making sure her bottom hit each one fully to delay what she thought was an inevitable thrashing. She reached the bottom stair and stopped there, looking over at her mother in the foyer.

"I din't mean to, mumma." she said in her version of child speak and her mother's grim face broke into a sad smile.

"I know, sweetpea. It's not your fault."

Suddenly, the pounding began again and Claire's mother hurried her up the stairs and into her mother's room to huddle on the bed with her.

"Who dat?" Claire asked and her mother hushed her.

"He's a very bad man, Claire, and we want him to go away." her mother replied, hushing her again and pulling Claire closer as the sounds grew louder and then died off in defeat.

One final thump resounded and then a car ground to a start and drove away.

The year had come and gone so quickly that none of the group knew where it had gone. All they knew was that they had to find a date and get a dress or a tux for prom.

Shannon, Kate, Claire, Cindy, Libby and Sun already had dates and dresses. Ana (as far as her friends knew) did not.

So they were all surprised when Ana showed up on prom night in a stunning ivory/scarlet sash number with James Ford hanging off her arm.

Claire wanted to go over and ask what had caused their change of heart about each other, guiltily wanted to go spill bright red punch on Ana's dress to make her own blue halter seem nicer, wanted to do anything but dance.

Again.

But dance she did as the students arranged themselves with their preselected partners and began an intricate ballroom dance that Claire was sure she'd never learned but knew the steps to anyway.

All Claire could do was dance. And wait.  
And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And w-

**BANG!**

Everyone's head turned toward the center of the dance floor where the bang had emanated from.

Where Ana stood with a look of shock, clutching her abdomen as blood soaked her creamy off white gown and left a trail down her skirt before pooling out from beneath said skirt.

Where Ana collapsed to the floor in shock and lay in a pool of her own blood as no one rushed to help, but instead turned back to their dance as Ana's eyes went glassy and her body went limp.

Where James Ford stood holding the smoking gun with a look in his eyes so dead she could only open her mouth and scream as he turned the gun on her.

Claire snapped awake and sat up in bed, clutching at her abdomen and screaming as loud as she possibly could.

A thump was heard and then footsteps ran down the hall before her door slammed open and her mother tore inside the room in her pajamas.

"Claire, what's wrong?" she asked, looking around the room before flicking the light on and rushing to Claire's side as Claire waved a hand wildly at her.

"No-nothing. I-"

_Breathe. Don't forget to breathe._

"I just had a bad dream, mum." Claire said, forcing a sleepy smile and tugging unconsciously on her bedspread. "Sorry if I woke you."

"Are you _sure_ you're all right? You were screaming..."

"I'm fine." Claire said pertly and a little harsher than she really meant to. "Sorry. I'm fine, I'm fine."

Claire's mother studied her daughter for a moment before nodding and getting up from the bed, brushing some hair out of Claire's face in the process.

"Do you want the door closed?"

"Yes, please." Claire said from beneath the comforter.

"G'night, love."

"G'night, mum." Claire said, holding her breath as she listened to her mother walk down the hall and get back into bed. Then, she scrambled for her diary and began to write as fast as she could.

The dream had never made her scream before and she couldn't escape the cold feeling that descended upon her and refused to leave.

Sayid scratched at the back of his neck, yawning as he entered the kitchen dressed only in his sleep clothes. Ana sat at the table, dressed and picking at her cereal with her spoon, staring into the bowl like it would tell her the future.

"Morning." he said and she looked up for a moment before looking back down at her cereal.

"Morning." she muttered sullenly, moving her cereal around in her bowl again.

"Where's mom?" he asked, grabbing a bowl and pouring himself some breakfast as he sat at the table across from his sister. Normally their mother was there to greet them for breakfast.

"She has a _boyfriend_ now, didn't you know?" Ana asked nastily and it took him a moment to realize that she'd spoken in Arabic. Ana never spoke in Arabic unless she was upset about something and didn't want anyone except him to know.

"You don't like him." he replied in kind, smiling in amusement and she glared at him.

"Of course I don't like him. If he'd given you the look he gave me, you wouldn't _friggin_ like him either." Ana muttered, pushing her cereal away and moving to get up but Sayid grabbed her wrist.

"Sit." he commanded and, surprisingly, she obeyed, plopping back down into her seat.

"What?"

"First of all, we both know you're going to bitch about how hungry you are if you don't finish eating." he said, pushing her bowl back toward her before continuing. "And how did he look at you?"

"Never mind." Ana muttered, keeping her eyes on her cereal as she wolfed it down.

"No, not 'never mind.'" he said, grabbing her wrist again to stop her shoveling more food into her mouth. "Obviously he made you uncomfortable and I want to know why."

Ana looked at him for a moment, as if trying to decide whether or not she should tell him.

"I'll keep bugging you until you tell me."

Ana sighed and set her bowl on the table and swallowed the last bit of food she'd stuffed in her mouth.

"He made me feel dirty." she said, looking down at her hands in shame she was sure she shouldn't be feeling. "Like I would never be clean again."

Claire tried to balance her grande fat free one sugar in the raw extra whipped cream macchiato coffee cup in one hand and get three books from her locker with the other.

It didn't work and she let out a growl as she felt the books start to tumble from where they rested in the crook of her arm. The coffee was held firmly in her hand.

After all, the coffee was more important than the books.

"Blast!" she exclaimed as one of the books landed on her foot and she had to grab the door of her locker to keep from stumbling over and spilling her coffee as she jumped on the uninjured foot in pain.

"Are you all right?"

Claire looked over her shoulder to see the one person she could do without seeing for the rest of her life.

Charlie Ford stood there looking at her, looking earnestly worried.

_Although his earnest look is kinda cut-NO! No! Charlie Ford was not cute in any way, shape or form! Bad Claire!_

"I've gone insane." she muttered to herself as she set her coffee in her locker and crouched down to collect her books.

"I'm quite all right, thanks." she said to Charlie, a little anger at herself and some nastiness invading her voice but it wasn't like she could help it. The freak had developed an unnatural crush on her.

"Oh! I've got it!" Charlie said, crouching down and grabbing the books from the floor enthusiastically before she could do it herself. She couldn't help but suck her teeth angrily as she straightened up and he handed her the books.

"Here you go." he said, grinning at her lopsidedly.

"Thanks, Charlie." she said, turning back to her locker and praying that he would just leave. Leave her alone, leave to go to class, leave for Phuket, she didn't care as long as he left.

"Hey, Claire?"

"Yes, Charlie?" she asked, annoyance clear in her voice as she turned back to him.

"Would you like to get some coffee sometime? O-or hot chocolate, if you like that better." he asked nervously and Claire almost choked on her own laughter, managing to stifle it just in time.

"Sorry, I'm getting a cold." she said, trying to explain away the choke and think of an excuse not to have coffee with him at the same time.

"Claire?" he asked, worried about the spaced out look in her eyes and she blinked.

"Sorry?" she asked.

"I asked if you would go out with me sometime?" Charlie asked again and Claire shook her head violently, turning back to her locker.

"I can-I've got-I've got a bloke, Charlie."

"You do?" he asked and the shattered look on his face almost broke her heart as she nodded over her shoulder. 'Almost' being the key word.

"Yeah, you remember Thomas? From Hurley's party."

"But he said that-"

"We started going out a couple of days ago." she interrupted, turning pink with the lie as she turned back to her locker and took a sip of her coffee which had turned cold and tasted bitter going down her throat.

"Oh. Okay, then." he said quietly and his footsteps as he walked away sounded like the loneliest sound in the world to her at that moment.

Claire sighed as she realized that A. she had probably just broken Charlie's heart if not shattered it, B. her coffee wasn't going to get any warmer or tastier and C. she was late for class because the bell just rang.

Grabbing her books and her coffee, she jammed her locker closed with her elbow as best she could and took another sip of the coffee, making a face at the cup.

_Like I could hurt the bloody thing's feelings_. she thought to herself, tossing the Styrofoam cup in the trash as she hurried past. She wasn't sure whether she was talking about the cup or Charlie's heart.

_"Stop calling here." _

Claire continued to play with her toys as her mother stood around the corner, speaking on the cordless phone to someone Claire didn't know.

"I don't care. You never gave a damn about her until no-" Claire's mother stopped speaking as she was interrupted by the caller on the other line.

"I sent you a damn letter!" Claire's mother snapped into the phone, making Claire jump and drop one of her dolls.

The person on the line said something and her mother replied loudly

"When she was born! Y'know? Three bloody years ago?"

The person on the other end murmured something Claire couldn't understand and she heard her mother sit in a chair hard.

"You never got it." her mother said, disbelief leaking into her voice.

"You never got it?" she said again, her tone somewhere between a question and a statement.

There was a rustling as she stood and her jeans rubbed against one another as she began to pace in the kitchen. Claire sneaked up to the door and looked around the frame, watching her mother almost have a nervous breakdown and wondering who the other person was on the line.

"What happened?" her mother asked and the caller said something. "No, not **that**, I know how that happened. I was there remember? I meant, how did you find out?"

There was a lengthy silence until-

"That sodding **bitch**!" her mother cursed loudly, standing and making the chair fall over backwards before almost tumbling over it herself. "She hid it?"

Another murmur and Claire's mother hung up the phone, pacing the length of the room again before angrily throwing the phone against the wall. The phone hit the wall, bounced off and hit the floor, plastic shattering.

"God damn it!" her mother snapped, kicking at the chair before she moved to pick up the broken phone.

"Ana?"

Ana glanced over at Shannon, watching as she sat on the bleachers beside her before sliding her eyes back to stare straight ahead.

"What do you want?" Ana said harshly, voice breaking, and Shannon winced.

"I-I wanted to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry for calling you a whore." Shannon replied and she saw Ana tense up in response. "I'm sorry for all the sh-t I put you and everybody else through while I was off in my own little world."

"Why the change of heart?"

"Sun gave me a proverbial slap across the face." Shannon muttered, looking down at her hands which were twisting around each other in her lap.

"Oh."

Shannon's head snapped to the side as a loud slap resounded in the gym. Shannon just bit her lip and put a hand to her face tenderly as she turned it to look back at Ana.

"Remind me to thank Sun." Ana said, still staring off into the distance but now rubbing the palm of her hand as it tingled.

"Feel better now?" Shannon asked, rubbing at her face but knowing that she completely deserved what she had just received.

"No." Ana said, eyes flicking between Shannon and straight ahead.

"Okay." Shannon said, rolling her lips in on each other as the silence became deafening.

"But I will be."

Shannon squealed and tackled Ana in a hug and neither of them could help but grin widely.

"Are you Shannon?" Libby asked the blond girl across the table who was chatting with Ana.

"Yeah." Shannon said, looking over at the new girl. "You're Libby, right? Sawyer's sister?"

Libby sucked in a breath at the name and Shannon looked at her strangely, but Libby just waved a hand in dismissal.

"Yep. That's me. Libby Ford." she babbled, standing and extending her hand across the table towards Shannon who took it and shook it. "Nice to meet you. Welcome back."

"Thanks, Libby." Shannon said, smiling warmly at the girl. "It's nice to meet you too."

"Glad to see you again, Shan." Sun said, smiling knowingly at her.

"Glad to be back." Shannon replied, noticing the tension slowly seeping out of the table's occupants. "Someone gave my evil twin a slap or two."

Sun bit her lip to keep herself from laughing but a small snort escaped anyway so she buried her face in her food.

"Dude, I am _so_ thankful to whoever did that, I can't even begin to show my gratitude." Hurley muttered and everyone exclaimed in surprise and disgust as Ana covered them in a syrupy spray of soda.

Libby made the excuse that she wanted to go clean up in the bathroom and walked out of the lunchroom, something undescribable flashing in her eyes.

Sawyer tried to keep his eyes on his book but they kept flicking up toward the door, waiting for it to bang open and Shannon to walk through.

But she didn't.

He sighed and placed the book over his eyes to block out the sun that wasn't really poking him in the eyes.

_It's better this way_. he told himself repeatedly but he couldn't help missing her presence that had been there for the longest time.

All that was left was a Shannon-shaped hole.

The door banged open and Sawyer's head shot up to see a blond standing there, chest heaving.

True, not exactly the blond he wanted to see but blond none the less.

"Hey, Lib-"

"Why?" she spat, eyes flaring and Sawyer thought his sister looked like nothing less than the devil reincarnate in that moment.

"'Why' what?"

"Don't give me that bullshit, James Ford! Why are you using that name?"

Sawyer was quiet, caught in his crime by his younger-sister-who-was-the-devil-reincarnate.

"It's who I am, Lib." he replied softly and the look on Libby's face changed from anger to a degree of horror. "You know that."

"Why would you even think that?" she asked, voice trembling.

"A tiger can't change his stripes, moonbeam." Sawyer said and Libby let out a sob, clapping a hand to her face before she turned and ran back into the school.

Now, there were two holes, both people-shaped and he wondered how many more holes his heart could stand before it wasn't there anymore.


	13. Alice in Wonderland, Part 2

_Bathtime in the Littleton household was a nightly ritual that Claire, unlike most other three year olds, enjoyed taking part in. Her mother would always hunt her down and swoop her up, blowing raspberries on her stomach before sweeping her into the bathroom. She would help Claire out of her play clothes and into the empty tub before turning the water on-never too hot, never too cold. Like Goldilocks and the three Bears-juuuuuust right. Then, her mother would pull out the bath toys and dump the myriad into the soapy water before settling herself beside the tub and playing with Claire until it was time to wash up._

That was the best part, in Claire's opinion. Her mother always did this thing with her fingers while she washed Claire's hair and it made Claire feel all good tingly warm all over as it made her sleepier and sleepier.

It was almost a month since the night Claire had awoken in the night and the following phone call and her mother had made many calls to the bad man using words that Claire didn't understand, like "vista" and "deportation". They just made Claire giggle because they sounded funny to her.

That night, as she was playing a game involving her rubber duck, two fish and an airplane, Claire's mother got a look in her eyes that made Claire look at her inquisitively for a moment before turning back to her game.

"Claire, how would you like to go on a trip?"

"Twip!" Claire said and her mother smiled half-heartedly, brushing her wavy blond locks out of her face as Claire splashed around in the tub.

"Yeah, trip." her mother said, squeezing shampoo into her hands before going to work on Claire's long hair, effectively lulling Claire into that sense between consciousness and sleep that made it seem like a form of drunkenness. "To America."

"Merca?" Claire asked sleepily as her mother rinsed the soap from her hair and pulled her from the tub. Claire shrugged her shoulders and made an 'Eh' sound as her mother wrapped her in a fluffy blue towel and carried her to her room to get her ready for bed.

"You don't like it?" her mother asked, ruffling Claire's hair with the towel before turning and fetching bootie pajamas from the drawer beneath the changing table. Claire just shrugged her shoulders again and made the sound, then yawned. "I think you're too sleepy to care right now, hmm? Am I right?"

"Catcha star." Claire murmured as her mother stuffed her into her flannel pajamas and pulled her against her chest. Claire smiled to herself as her mother first began to hum-the rumbling of her chest filling Claire's head, her entire being-then began to sing the lullaby she'd sung to Claire since she was born in the sweetest voice Claire had ever heard in her three years long life.

"Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, never let it fade away. Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day..." 

"I got my learner's permit over the weekend." Michael explained, taking it out and passing it around the table as everyone 'Oooo'ed and 'Ahhh'ed over the piece of paper, which eventually made it's way back to him.

"So, was the written as hard as everybody says it is?" Shannon asked, handing the paper back to him.

"Not if you actually read the manual. If you do that, it's a breeze." Michael said, tucking the permit back into his wallet and into his pocket.

"Congratulations, Mike." Cindy said and Hurley raised his soda bottle into the air.

"I propose a toast." he said in a voice that made everyone chuckle. "To Michael, the first of us to drive."

There was a chorus of 'To Michael's as each of them raised their bottles or boxes or cans and knocked them off each other.

"I don't have to give a speech do I?" Michael asked, pretending to be nervous. "Cause I totally have it in my back pocket. Gimme a sec." he finished, standing and pulling his permit back out.

"I would like to thank-"

"Sit down, Michael." Sayid said. "You're getting strange looks."

"And how is that different from any other day, Sayid?" Michael asked, sitting down regardless.

"Funny." Sayid replied, giving Michael a look before turning back to his lunch.

"I admit it."

Eko looked up from the work he was finishing up in the library and saw Jack standing there hesitantly.

Calmly, Eko closed his work and put it to the side as his eyes traveled over Jack, lingering on the faded hand-shaped bruise on his arm and the split lip. There was a desperate look in Jack's eyes, as if all he wanted was for everything to stop.

"I respect you more for it." Eko replied truthfully as Jack shifted his weight from one leg to the other before limping over to the table and sitting across from Eko. Eko just watched him approach and sit and Eko waited for Jack to speak first.

The pair sat in silence until Jack spoke.

"I tried to kill myself last night." he said, pulling the sleeves of his shirt back and raising his arms to show Eko the bandages attached shoddily to his forearms. "Took a knife to my forearms."

"Did that make you feel better, Jack?" Eko asked, resting his hands on the table, folded, as Jack tugged his sleeves back down and played with the end of one.

"No." Jack admitted, eyes flicking up to meet Eko's for a split second before flicking away again nervously. "I felt shitty."

"You decided not to give in." Eko said, more of a statement than a question but Jack nodded anyway.

"I sat in my bathtub and I watched the blood leak out of my arms and I thought how fascinating it all was." Jack said, the look in his eyes changing from desperate to haunted disgust. "And then I thought 'My friends always talk about how determined I am. How would this look to them, if I just sat here and let myself drip down the drain.' And I realized how friggin _stupid_ I was being. How damn disgusting I was."

"The wise man who sits before me must be someone else then." Eko said, eyes twinkling as he watched Jack for a reaction.

"You want to be a priest, right?" Jack asked and Eko's brow furrowed in a slight confusion but he nodded and Jack continued. "Doesn't this bother you? Isn't it, like, an unforgivable crime in heaven to try and off yourself?"

"It is only unforgivable by God if you succeed, not if you realize your mistake and attempt to undo it." Eko replied, watching as Jack began to tap madly on the tabletop. "I do not believe in judging others, Jack, as I may be judged based upon that."

They sat in silence again for a few moments before Jack let out a noise somewhere between a sob and a yell as he buried his face in his hands.

"I just want it to stop." Eko heard through Jack's hands, his voice muffled by the barrier. He pulled his hands away from his face and looked at Eko through red-rimmed eyes. "Is that a crime? Wanting it all to stop?"

"No." Eko said, standing and walking around to Jack, kneeling next to him on the floor. "It is not."

Jack's face contorted in sadness and Eko reached out a hand in offering to him. Jack looked at the hand in confusion before he took it and fell to his knees beside Eko on the ground, sobbing into his shoulder. Eko held him and did what he did best.

He prayed.

"Behold me, my beloved Jesus, weighed down under the burden of my trials and sufferings, I cast myself at Your feet, that You may renew my strength and my courage, while I rest here in Your Presence. Permit me to lay down my cross..."

Kate sighed in relief as she approached her science class, the last class of the day.

Until she remembered the project and groaned in a mixture of anger and annoyance.

_I don't want to do this damn thing_. she thought as she yanked the door open and walked in.

Boone and Professor Locke looked up at her in surprise as her muscles forgot to work and the door slammed behind her.

"You're early." Boone said in response and Kate's muscles remembered how to work again.

"So're you." she said, walking to her seat in the back of the room and plonking herself down in it before pulling out her science book and setting it on the lab table with a loud thunk. She pulled out her notebook and a pen and dropped those on the table, too, as Boone and Locke turned back to the conversation she'd interrupted, speaking in tones so low she couldn't catch more than a few scattered words.

Laying her head on her forearms, Kate closed her eyes and sighed in contentment as she slowly drifted off to sleep.

Kate's head snapped up from the desk as Boone elbowed her just below her ribs, waking her up from her dream. It had involved chocolate and satin sheets and B...

Boone elbowed her in the ribs again, harder this time and she grunted in pain, slapping him on the chest angrily.

"I was having a nice dream!" she hissed and Boone shot her a look.

"We're partners for the project, Kate. Thought you'd like to know." he hissed back, and Kate looked down at his notebook where their subject was written across the top of the sheet.

"_History and effect of subliminal messages_? What the hell is that?" she read as Locke continued his pairings and subjects.

"It's messages under music and words in movies." Boone explained, sounding aggravated with Kate for just being there to begin with.

"I was still having a nice dream." she muttered, whacking Boone once more for good measure.

"Yeah, well if you'd actually pay _attention_ in science class we wouldn't have to do this sh-t every damn day!" Boone snapped, rubbing the spot on his chest in irritation as Kate crossed her arms stubbornly and leaned further back in her seat.

"Shepherd and Rutherford. The history and effect of suicide on today's world."

Jack's face lost most of it's color as Shannon groaned at the topic they'd been given.

"Great." she muttered. "Just what I wanted to research on a daily basis."

"It's not that bad, Shannon. Seriously." Jack muttered, trying to avoid meeting anyone's eyes.

"What? You know this from personal experience?" Shannon snarked and Jack shot her a nasty grin.

"Right." he said, keeping up his evil!Jack persona with an evil chuckle. "I tried to kill myself last night."

"Cortez and Ford, James. The history and effect of the Romeo and Juliet story on today's society."

"Can I get a different partner?" Ana asked loudly, interrupting Locke before he could proceed.

"I'm afraid not, AnaLucia." he replied and then moved on as if she hadn't even spoken.

"Well, why not?" she asked angrily and he looked up again.

"Because I've already assigned everyone their partners and the topics are specifically matched to the pairs." Locke explained and Ana crossed her arms, huffing angrily as she sank down into her chair.

Sawyer turned in his chair in front of her and grinned wickedly, which just made Ana blush, scowl and sink further down in her seat as he turned to face forward again.

_"Ta da!"_

Claire blinked up at the large house before her that was painted a creamy yellow with eggplant-pink trim as her mother pulled her hands away from her face.

Claire cocked her head at the house then stuck her tongue out and blew a raspberry at it, scrunching her nose at it in disgust.

"Oh, come on." her mother said playfully. "We can always repaint it."

Claire made another raspberry and giggled as her mother cocked an eyebrow in mock suspicion.

"I think you, Miss Claire, are making fun of me, I think you are."

Claire let out a squeal as her mother lifted her shirt and blew her own raspberries on Claire's stomach until both were consumed by giggles. Claire looked away from the horrible house and across the street, where her eyes fell upon a small, brown-haired boy with blue eyes staring at them. He wore a red cape and held a stick in one hand as he stood stock still in the yard until two more children, a boy and a girl, tore around the corner and ran into him, knocking him over.  
Giggles erupted from the group and Claire suddenly noticed that she was moving away from the group.

"Unh! Unh!" she grunted, waving her arms over her mother's shoulder and grasping her tiny hands at the air there as if the boy and his cape would magically appear there instead of across the street. Her mother paid her actions no heed and instead opened the door and walked into the house.

"Whoever decorated this place was a horrible decorator." her mother muttered as she placed Claire on the floor in the living room and went in search of the bathroom. Claire pushed herself up and toddled over to one of the windows framing the door and looked out longingly but the boy and his friends were gone.

"What are ya lookin' at out there?"

Claire sniffled as she placed her tiny palm flat against the glass where the boy had been.

"Supah." she whispered as tears filled her eyes and began to seep down her cheeks

"_The history and effect of the Romeo and Juliet story on today's society._" Ana mocked as she was jostled out of the room by her friends and classmates.

"Hey! Watch it!" she snapped at a sun-kissed blond who was applying shimmery powder to her face and not paying attention to where she was actually walking.

"Bitch." Ana muttered as the girl glared at her and walked away.

"You're such a people person, muchacha." said a voice in her ear and she almost jumped out of her skin as she spun on Sawyer, who stood behind her grinning.

"And you're an annoying person." Ana snapped. Sawyer only grinned wider which made her flush with anger. It was then that she realized how close they actually were to each other.

"Shove off." Ana snapped, taking a step back away from Sawyer, who followed her as she kept backing up. Then, of course, her back hit the wall and she was trapped.

"You can't do this." she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking at their close proximity.

"Watch me." he said, never taking his eyes off of hers as he backed away, turned and disappeared around the corner.

Ana just let the wall hold her up for fear that her legs would give way if she moved an inch and she would fall.

End

Previews!

Once Upon a Time in Mexico-An AnaLucia-Centric Chapter  
Ana meets her mother's boyfriend properly, Shannon tutors Sayid and Michael does something stupid.

Fly Away Home-A Cindy-Centric Chapter  
Cindy has a talk with Michael, Hurley grills Charlie about his sister and Ana and Sawyer research their topic.

Anonymous-A Jack-Centric Chapter  
Jack spends the night at Boone's house after a particularly nasty fight with his father, the group gets ready for Halloween and two of the group are caught in a slightly compromising position.


End file.
